
This is a wine that can no longer be made, although it's popular, delicious and incredibly good value. The reason is that after the 2019 vintage, the grower in Irancy in the north of Burgundy pulled out the Gamay vines. Passetoutgrain is a wine made half with Gamay (the Beaujolais grape) and half with Pinot Noir, which makes most red burgundy. Benoît Cantin did this for economic reasons — passetoutgrain sells for much less than Irancy burgundy — but it was a crying shame and his father was especially upset.
Hoxton Beach, who run the Lido, Queens Park and Highgate Wood cafés, bought the last available pallet of this piece of history and are selling it at £85 a case including delivery, with all the money raised to go to the Real Cafés legal fund. Just email hoxtonhome@gmail.com.
What is the wine like? Henry Jeffreys, an award-winning wine writer, says it's a perfect bistro wine. Patrick Matthews of Hoxton Beach, who has also written award-winning wine books, says that as it ages it's becoming more than that. As well as its original primary fruit — sour cherries, damsons, sloes — it's now, for a fraction of the price you'd expect, starting to give the whole mature burgundy experience while staying fresh and delicious.
Undervalued and irreplaceable. Rather like the Heath cafés, in fact.