i’ve been absent for a bit living life and working. in the last year and a bit (eep!) i’ve been in london, i’ve learned so much more about wine, and my love for this world in a glass has only grown and grown. for me, it has become a language - it is how i mark memories, moves, milestones in my life.
with my partner, george - a sommelier, wine merchant, and generally a person who knows so much more about wine than me because he’s worked in it his whole life, we’re starting this new series within this substack called “the budget bon vivant.” inspired by our love of restaurants, parties, good food and wine, and dinner parties, and our modest wine-professional salaries.
i’ll write about some wines, and accompanying moments, memories, life updates in both our lives. hopefully this becomes semi-regular, and gets me writing more frequently.
budget bon vivant: 01
this month, george and i had the pleasure of hosting close friends for dinner four times, where a dinner table feels indulgent in 2025 london. here’s what we’ve drunk and loved, and some reflections on my first job in the wine trade.
luxe (£20-25)
cremant du jura “cuvee bethanie” brut NV, fruitiere vinicole d’arbois
jura, france | chardonnay 100%
this is my favourite under-£30 sparkling wine, and was a benchmark wine in discovering my love of sparkling wine and champagne. though it’s made from 100% chardonnay, the liqueur d’expedition (a.k.a. dosage, a.k.a. wine with some level of sugar added right before bottling, before the wine goes on its expedition) is vin jaune, the signature drink of mountainous jura. this adds a creamy, walnutty richness to the wine, and balances the high acidity needed to make sparkling wine work. while champagne is my personal favourite beverage, i find that most of london wine is too stuffy, reverential, and technical about it. this cremant, for me, is purely about enjoyment and pleasure.
i recently left my first wine job, where we called this “the sparkling wine of hackney". it was a wine shop in hackney, naturally, where i first felt called to land in london.
when i was a teacher in new york city, i lived next to a bottle shop in crown heights. so many days i would walk past the shop’s giant window and wish i worked there: amidst all the bottles, talking about wine all day. wine, for me then, was something i loved but never considered pursuing as a career. i was just excited by the idea of being around it all day, and excited by the idea of something that felt so diametrically opposed to the structures of teaching literature.
it was this desire for a diametrically opposing force that led me to a career change, from teacher and writer in new york to wine professional and general gastronome in london. i owe it all to bottle shops, and i owe it all to the people who work in them.
bargain (£15-20)
lambrusco secco rosso NV, tenuta coccapane
emilia-romagna, italy | lambrusco grasparossa 100%
slightly bending our own rules (but what bon vivant doesn’t?) to include this prime example of modern lambrusco, priced between £15-16 at different wine merchants across london.
lambrusco is such a funny wine - it’s a sparkling red that is both a fruity, albeit quite intense red, with the same atmosphere of pressure as a cremant. it’s definitely both sparkling and a red wine, and uncompromising on either front. it’s a little weird egg in the world of wine - in the 1980’s and 1990’s, it was considered bottom-shelf, and is now shaping up to be well-made, trendy, and “hackney.”
i went to a friend’s birthday party at gordon’s wine bar, and everyone ordered the bordeaux blanc (predominantly sauvignon blanc and some semillon, quite inoffensive and good to drink for hours on end). when it was time for me to order a bottle, i chose to break with tradition and ordered lambrusco. it proved to be a divisive choice, with people saying it was “like juice” or “weird, red wine that’s… fizzy.”
i find that lambrusco goes best with pizza, especially classic styles that let the tomato sauce sing. it also goes with picnics, spring and summer, and all manner of warm days and unpretentious long evenings, when you allow yourself to fully bask in this weird little beverage feels both well-made and fun. i don’t find lambrusco weird at all, i just find it fun. but a good bon vivant is serious about fun, and not serious about much else. lucky for me, london is the joint-best city in the world in warm weather (tying it with brooklyn). the perfect places for bon vivants.
steal (£10-15)
bianco 2023, ciello
sicily, italy | catarratto 100%
the skin-contact wine that powers east london.
as i ease out of my first job in wine and into the next step in my career, i’m finding that sitting in victoria park (the park on my doorstep in east london) with various picnic accoutrements has been instrumental for staying sane.
in my old life in new york, a friend, ananya, is a improv jazz pianist. ananya introduced me to a lot of what i know about jazz. in london, i find myself listening to a lot of jazz. it just is good for all moods, all weathers, all temperaments. i find myself now, in spring, listening to a lot of “they say it’s spring” by blossom dearie.
the idea of the song is that true love doesn’t just blossom in spring, it transcends the seasons. the four years i was single were some of the toughest times in my life. i leaned a lot on my friends, and had the best friend circle i’ve ever had in my life when i lived in new york. i have so much empathy for single people who don’t want to be single, because it’s fucking difficult and you spend all the time wondering what’s wrong with you. when i was single i spent the whole time wondering why it was seemingly easy for everyone else and impossible for me to find anyone. and because i’m no longer single, i’m exceedingly grateful for london. london brought me a new life, and also brought me george.
wildcard
chateaueneuf-du-pape rouge 2012, chateau cabrieres
southern rhone, france | grenache, syrah, mourvedre, cinsault
yes, this is an £80 top-tier chateauneuf, but i’m writing about it because it was a gift to me and the team at the wine shop i worked in. a longtime regular, who moved back to paris, gifted us a bottle each when he left london.
the gesture was incredibly moving, and is one of the examples of the genuine joy that working in service and hospitality can bring. it is also an example of the impact i like to think wine shop staff can have. if the job is done well, the wine shop becomes a kind of reverent place for wine, singular in its ability to just yap and chat about wine endlessly with someone else who knows about wine. you can do this in very few wine bars and restaurants. in wine shops, time can be flexible - there’s nothing that can’t wait five minutes, five minutes in which we can natter about wine to the people who love it. only in a wine shop can you go in just to talk. a regular who is now a friend always mentioned that the bottles were secondary - it was talking to someone about producers, cuvees, and terroir that filled the hunger.
we shared our bottle over dinner at ours, with a close friend who loves structured, classic rhone reds. so much of wine centres around people and stories - the people and stories behind the wines, and the people and stories in front of us, looking for a bottle for the evening. we do it for all of them, for those who love it, and for the joy of bringing the right bottle to the right person.
recommendations of the week
cremant du jura “cuvee bethanie” £23.20, bottle apostle. 12.5%. apple pie, brioche, caramel, biscuit. rich, generous. if you like toastier, more giving sparklers, this is the one. take it everywhere, it goes with everything.
simple syrup wine and spirits, 810 nostrand ave., brooklyn, new york 11216. one of the best wine shops in the city hands-down, and one of my personal favourite places in the city. the place where my love for wine was piqued, and arguably where the embers of my wine career started.
lambrusco secco, tenuta coccapane, £16, bottle apostle. 11.5%. fruity, quite intense red that owes its freshness to the charmat method. well-made, fun, easy-drinking, distinctive.
gordon’s wine bar, 47 villiers st, london WC2N 6NE. london’s oldest wine bar, established 1890. wine list is extensive and classic. good bottle prices with relatively low mark-ups for the city. it is a cult favourite, a hidden gem, and london’s worst-kept secret.
ciello bianco, £11.60, bottle apostle. 12.5%. natural, hazy, textured, a little over a tenner. if you like funky orange wine, you won’t find a more delicious, better-quality wine for the price. the 2023 vintage is particularly funky compared to the cleaner 2022.
they say it’s spring by blossom dearie. ethereal, classic, romantic, springlike. a banger.
chateauneuf-du-pape 2012, chateau cabrieres, £80, banquist (out of stock). 14.5%. incredibly structured, powerful rhone red with black fruits, and developed tertiary characteristics: forest floor, truffle and mushroom. still so much life left in it, and could age for another 5 years easily. if drinking now, decant for an hour.