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BAGMA Bulletin’s Chris Boiling has a sideline in making unusual wines around the world. They’re mostly made from rare grapes in lesserknown winelands, teaming up with local winemakers, and now the first wines are becoming available…

MY LOVE AFFAIR with wine began in a slightly unusual way – I bought a small winehouse and vineyard in Slovenia without knowing anything about winemaking or this small country, which is sandwiched between Austria, Italy, Croatia and Hungary. It was an investment project to top up my paltry pension when I retired and an antidote for our empty nest syndrome.

My neighbours in the beautiful region of Jeruzalem and the previous owner kindly showed me what to do on my first harvest, and the wine turned out fine. But I wanted to do better and know more, so I signed up for a four-year, part-time degree in wine production at Plumpton College in East Sussex.

During Covid, when I couldn’t visit the place as much as I wanted to or indulge in my other great passion, travelling, I cooked up a plan to make wine with winemakers I admired in different parts of the world. The hallmark of these wines would be their uniqueness. They would be different to what was available anywhere else, and different to what these talented winemakers normally turn out. This project would also promote rare grape varieties, lesser-known wine regions, sustainable winemaking and viticulture, and the wines would taste fantastic.

I started in a small way in 2021, making one barrel of an unusual Pinot Grigio in northeast Slovenia with a winemaker called Leon Gjerkeš. I pushed him to make a Pinot Grigio like no other – copper-coloured and packed with flavour. So often Pinot Grigios are bland and lifeless, yet the grape is a natural mutation of the world’s most critically acclaimed grape, Pinot Noir. We have tried to bring out some of its parent’s characteristics. We had to leave the wine in a French oak barrel for a few months longer than we wanted, as there were supply chain issues with glass bottles and my small order for 300 was way down their list of priorities. So, there is more oak flavour than I originally wanted, but it has given me the opportunity to talk to cigar lounges which normally pair their cigars with red wine or whisky rather than a ‘white’ wine. My project went crazy last year when I made six wines in four countries.

These six wines are:

● A highly sustainable organic wine made in Austria using amphorae and two new-age disease-resistant grapes (Souvignier Gris and Muscaris) that only required one spray in what winemakers in Central Europe are generally calling “a challenging vintage”. We made five wines from these two grapes, using different vessels (amphorae, oak barrels and stainless-steel tank) and different lengths of skin contact. The final wine will be a blend of these five components.

If you would like to reserve a bottle or two of the wines or the collection of six, send an email to ywine.club@ outlook.com stating which wines you’re interested in and how many you would like to reserve. No payment is required until the wines are ready to ship.

The white and amber wines are £15 each, the red wines are £20 each and the sparkling wine is £35. The collection of six is £120. Postage is free on orders over six bottles. When the wines are ready, I will contact you to see if you are still interested (or want to increase your order!) and sort out the payment and delivery details.

This year I am hoping to add some limited-edition wines from other countries, such as Italy, Spain and Croatia. I hope we can explore the world of wine together!

● An experimental white and red from Slovenia. The white is a co-fermentation featuring Laški rizling from a vineyard so steep it is worked by goats in winter, and exotic, aromatic Gewürztraminer berries. There is also a Blaufränkisch (a light red) made in a very traditional way from a highly underrated region in northeast Slovenia.

● In Hungary, I have helped to make a totally unique sparkling wine featuring the unknown grape variety Pearl of Victoria (a hybrid created for sparkling wines in the 1960s), plus Grüner Veltliner (fermented in oak and steel tanks). It’s the only one of its kind in the world.

● In Hungary, I’m also working on an unusual Kadarka (a light and slightly spicy red wine) with producers in two very different regions who favour two very different technologies (one likes to put their Kadarka in oak and one likes to use stainless-steel tanks). The forthcoming wine will be a blend of the two wines.

● In Georgia I have made a modern qvevri wine to showcase two ancient grape varieties, Kisi and Khikhvi. They were co-fermented in qvevri (large clay pots buried in the ground in a marani) and have spent six months on skins to extract the full range of flavours and aromas from the grape.

The plan with all these wines is to sell a third to a restaurant, a third to a wine bar and a third to wine club members. For wine club members, the wines will be offered individually and also in a presentation box with a booklet explaining the story behind each of the wines.

The Pinot Grigio will be available shortly, but the 2022 wines will only be available from later this year and in 2023. They are all in limited supply – 300-400 bottles per wine – so I am offering them to BAGMA Wine Club members first. They will not appeal to all wine drinkers and are aimed more at adventurous wine lovers who are looking to try something different or learn about a rare grape from one of the world’s great but lesser-known wine regions.

The reason I’m promoting the wines now, before they are available, is that Keith Christian’s replacement may not see the value of the BAGMA Wine Club.