Since 2017, we’ve made a regular point of scanning top wine lists across the country to see the producers who tend to appear over and over again. It was our way of trying to take a snapshot of the zeitgeist. Over the years, one thing has remained relatively fixed: The wine map continues to expand every year. And this isn’t just the wholesale introduction of new winemaking regions that were once considered obscure—Mexico’s Valle de Guadalupe, the Czech Republic’s Moravia, our own Wisconsin—but an expanding understanding of places we either thought we knew, or hadn’t known well enough, as well as a more encompassing view of what even qualifies as wine.
This year, we polled our network of contributors and sommeliers with a single question: Who is the producer that represents the best of wine right now, and why? We narrowed those responses to just 10 producers. From a sake brewer who has hooked the natural wine set to a collective out of Penedès turning cava country on its head to a Copenhagen outfit reinventing the nonalcoholic space, everyone on this list is making wines that are both purposeful and delicious. Here are the producers to know right now.
Wine nerds will know well the revolutions that have transformed some of the world’s most recognizable wine regions—notably Champagne, where the grower movement drastically changed the perception of the region, the wines and how they’re grown. But this narrative now continues to play out, over and over, in less-heralded wine regions, from Jerez to Itata. For Jim Sligh, wine educator and Punch contributor, the wines of Mas Candí “embody what’s happening in wine right now: one, the revival of industrial winegrowing landscapes by the children and grandchildren of the farmers who worked them, and two, the increasing number of soulful, small-scale producers that are mini incubators.”
Mas Candí is a collective of four winegrowers who together have helped reshape the image of Penedès, a region that, not too long ago, was mostly synonymous with large-scale industrial production of cava. Mas Candí winemakers pay homage to the region’s heritage with their own classic-method sparkling wines, but have also shown the scope of what the region and its native grapes (notably xarel-lo) can yield in a variety of formats, and sourced from old-vine vineyards farmed biodynamically. But it’s not just the wines with Mas Candí on the label. “Everybody involved also makes their own wines, too,” says Sligh. Look for Toni Carbó and Anna Serra’s La Salada label, as well as “playful, juicy co-ferments,” and an excellent pét-nat, Tinc Set, from Ramon Jané and Mercè Cuscó under the Ramon Jané label. As Sligh puts it: “It’s one-stop shopping for the revolution!”
Bottles to know: The group’s 100 percent xarel-lo brut nature, Segunyola, and Desig, a textured take on the grape that sees extended lees aging and 24 hours of skin contact, are proof of their mastery of the grape.
“Sake is entering its glou-glou era, and possibly no brewer demonstrates that better than Haruna Nakagawa and the Kaze no Mori brand of sakes she makes for Yucho Shuzo,” says Punch contributor Jenny Eagleton. The Yucho brewery has been making sake in Nara, which is considered to be its birthplace, for more than 300 years. Under the stewardship of the brewery’s 13th-generation owner, Chobei Yamamoto, Yucho has been exploring bold, flavorful pre-modern styles of sake, like the Bodaimoto, which is based on a style of sake that has not been in regular production since the 1700s (and dates back more than 700 years). But it is Nakagawa’s “spritzy, juicy, somewhat rustic, playful namazakes, which are sold in English-speaking countries as Wind of the Woods, that disappear from glasses,” says Eagleton. Namazake, which is often referred to as sake’s natural-wine analog, is unpasteurized sake (“nama” translates to “raw”) that is typically bottled for quick consumption, and generally has a fresher, softly effervescent profile. (The sake undergoes secondary fermentation in the bottle.) These sakes have captured the attention of the natural wine set, finding their way onto natural-leaning wine lists, and into retail stores, across the country.
Bottle to know: Kaze no Mori Akitsuho 657 Junmai Muroka Nama Genshu is at once tense and dense on the palate, but not without the breezy ease that makes this style of sake such a delight.
Just a decade ago, Sicily was still considered an “up-and-coming” wine region. Much of the excitement was centered on a handful of producers—Salvo Foti and Frank Cornelissen on Etna, Arianna Occhipinti and COS in Vittoria, to name a few. Today, the island’s diversity of grapes and terroirs is finally coming into view. Il Censo, located in the island’s southwestern interior, is situated on an old farm that lay abandoned for decades before Gaetano Gargano—the farm has been in his family for more than two centuries—and his wife, Nicoletta, took it over. The labels may look familiar to some. The revitalization of Il Censo began 25 years ago when the couple met the famed Umbrian winemaker Giampiero Bea in Montefalco. All of the farm’s winegrowing and winemaking activity was developed under his guidance, and today the wines are still made according to his principles (hand harvesting, native fermentation, minimal to no sulfur), with labels that pay homage to Bea’s own. The estate is focused on a white grape, catarratto, and a red grape, perricone, with both insolia and nero d’avola making up the balance. Grown at high elevations (the farm is located nearly 2,000 feet above sea level) in volcanic soil, the wines are generous and playful, but with bracing acidity that keeps them focused. “It’s a good story,” says Punch contributor Eliza Dumais, “but frankly, the quality of the wine itself is enough reason to remember the name.”
Bottle to know: Praruar, a skin-contact take on catarratto, is one of the best examples of orange wine from the island: rich, nearing amber in color, and full of dried fruit and iron-y minerality.
Margins is the independent project of winemaker Megan Bell. Leslie Pariseau, former Punch deputy editor and owner of New Orleans wine shop Patron Saint, says Bell “is doing the significant and deeply difficult work of seeking out Central Coast California’s underrepresented grapes and locations—the margins—while bringing her parcels’ farmers into the conversation.” Based out of the Santa Cruz Mountains, Bell works with grapes that are not often found on California labels, like assyrtiko (a Greek grape made famous on Santorini) from San Benito, counoise from Santa Clara or co-ferments of barbara and negrette. All of this adds up to a redefinition of what we mean by “marginal,” and what it means to source, responsibly, from multiple vineyards (all of the sites are farmed organically, at minimum). These are, in short, hugely impactful wines made on a very human scale. As Pariseau puts it, “Not only does she make beautiful wines in these places of transition, but she has put them at the center of the conversation about caring for the earth and the people who tend it.”
Bottles to know: Bell has a particular talent with chenin blanc from multiple sites, but her Clarksburg Skin-Fermented Chenin Blanc is a standout, as are her juicy counoise and Neutral Oak Hotel, a co-ferment of red and white grapes.
Like Sicily’s Il Censo, Clos Venturi is proof of just how much more there is to winemaking on these Mediterranean islands than we’ve previously understood. Over the past half-decade, Corsica has barnstormed its way into the U.S. market with exceptional wines from the coastal region of Ajaccio, focused mostly on electric vermentinu (the Corsican name for vermentino) and reds from sciaccarellu and niellucio (the local names for sciaccarello and sangiovese, respectively). But the wines of Clos Venturi, which hail from the island’s rugged, forested interior, have a different story to tell. Between two mountain ranges in Ponte Leccia, Manu Venturi tends 60 acres of high-altitude vineyard land planted to 19 different native Corsican varieties (carcaghjolu neru, anyone?) farmed biodynamically. The wines are extraordinary in their aromatic intensity, mineral depth and structure; this is particularly true of the whites, which see extended lees aging, giving them a richness and savory mouthfeel paired with an electric brightness. “These are classically constructed, transparent wines that taste like someplace specific—Ponte Leccia, it turns out!—and drink like they should cost three times as much as they do,” says Punch editor-in-chief Talia Baiocchi.
Bottle to know: Brama, a white made entirely from the native biancu gentile grape, is fermented in a concrete egg, aged for about a week on the skins and then 8 months on the lees. It’s mushroomy, aromatic and saline.
On the subject of marginal terroirs, when it comes to California winemaking it doesn’t get much more marginal than the Sacramento River Delta. This is a place that is effectively devoid of modern pedigree, and a reminder that our understanding of where great wine can be made in California is likewise under construction. Haarmeyer Wine Cellars was founded in 2008, and is a family-run operation—and not in the same way that so many Napa outfits purport to be Family Wines. The winery is Craig Haarmeyer, his wife, Kelly, his son, Alex, and daughter, Marian, who work out of the cellar of an old California sherry producer. (Prior to Prohibition, the state was, much to actual Spanish sherry’s chagrin, a massive producer of “sherry” wines.) “I would wager Haarmeyer Cellars is producing the best chenin blanc outside of the Loire,” says Saman Hosseini, Punch contributor and wine buyer at D.C.’s Domestique. Indeed, Haarmeyer’s chenins, many of them sourced from old vines, are made with minimal intervention, naturally fermented in neutral barrels and then aged on the lees until bottling. They’re textured and savory, with a leesy richness to counter crunchy acidity. While some of their most compelling work is sourced from the Sacramento area, the team also works with fruit from Lodi, the Sierra Nevada Foothills and more. “Don’t sleep on their nebbiolo rosato, which drinks like old-school Bandol rosés,” says Hosseini, “or their skin-contact riesling, which holds its own among the iconic orange wines of Slovenia.”
Bottles to know: Haarmeyer St. Rey Chenin Blanc En Foudre exemplifies just how good the team is with chenin. The regular St. Rey, sourced from younger vines, is a steal at about $20.
One of a number of high-concept fermentation specialists focused on “no-and-low” beverages, Muri has managed to imbue nonalcoholic ferments with wine-like complexity in a wholly unique way. Muri was started by Murray Paterson, a former distiller at Copenhagen’s Empirical Spirits, who works alongside Ioakeim Goulidis, an alum of Noma’s fermentation lab. The pedigree is clear in the products, which intentionally defy easy categorization; they’re about flavor and process over a discernible blueprint. The two rely on a number of fermentation techniques, from lacto-fermentation to carbonic maceration, applied to a range of fruits (quince, gooseberries, currants) and botanicals (peppercorns, woodruff, fig leaf), yielding frothy, juicy beverages that are, first and foremost, craveable. What also sets Muri’s drinks apart from the myriad uncategorizable nonalcoholic “wines” is their compatibility with food. Sommelier, wine educator and Punch contributor Jirka Jireh says that her experience working with Muri is proof that “the no-and-low category will thrive in restaurant spaces.”
Bottle to know: Muri’s Yamilé is made with lacto-fermented rhubarb, carbonic-macerated raspberries and gooseberries, and kefir made with pink peppercorns.
In a current wine culture obsessed with what’s new, edgy, unexpected, it’s important to note that sometimes what’s old can, if you adjust your view, appear new again. While Mathieu Vallée’s stewardship of the estate dates to 2007, Château Yvonne’s current success is the direct result of the work done by Françoise Foucault, of the famed Clos Rougeard estate, to restore old cabernet franc and chenin blanc vineyards, converting them to organic farming. This work ultimately turned Saumur into “a hotbed of new boutique greats,” says Steven Grubbs, Punch contributor and wine director at Atlanta’s 5&10, The National and more. The result, in part, are the wines of Château Yvonne. Across both the whites and the reds, the wines are structured, textured, minerally, and built for aging in many instances, but not without a prettiness and subtlety that is characteristic of some of the very best wines in the world. While the estate’s top cuvées will run you about $50 and up, the La Folie and L’Ile Quatre Sous cabernet francs are consistently among some of the great values to be had from anywhere in the world.
Bottles to know: Both La Folie and L’Ile Quatre Sous show the full aromatic spectrum of cab franc at (or under) $30, but if you’re up for a splurge, Château Yvonne’s Saumur Blanc is chenin blanc at its finest.
“If I had to pick one producer right now that represents the best of wine, I would pick Chiara Condello from Predappio in Emilia-Romagna,” says Annie Shi, partner and wine director at New York’s King and Jupiter. Condello, whose first vintage was 2015, works exclusively with sangiovese, and makes only two wines: a “normale,” which is macerated for 15 to 20 days before aging in neutral Slavonian oak for a year, and a “riserva,” which undergoes an extended maceration of around 40 days and is aged for two years. Both are farmed organically and fermented naturally in open-top wooden vats (a decidedly traditional approach). While sangiovese from Emilia-Romagna has long been dismissed for being of lesser quality than its Tuscan counterparts, Condello’s wines are textured, age-worthy, full of energy—an argument to the contrary. “Chiara represents the story of the new generation of winemakers in Italy: a young female winemaker who has split from her family domaine to make wines that are farmed thoughtfully and organically and made with care in the cellar,” says Shi. “Her sangiovese hits so far above her price point.”
Bottles to know: There are only two; you know what to do.
For many wine folks, modern Lebanese wine has been synonymous with one man: Serge Hochar, the jovial proprietor of Chateau Musar. Hochar guided his family’s winery through a decade and a half of war to become one of the world’s most beloved wineries. The Musar wines, fashioned in the image of old-school Bordeaux, helped expand the map for collectible wine. If there is one winemaker who has picked up where he left off (Hochar passed away in 2015) and sprinted, full speed, with the baton, it is Eddie Chami of Mersel Wine. But instead of focusing entirely on international varieties, Chami has turned his attention to Lebanon’s native grapes, like merwah, daw al amar and marini, utilizing a mix of styles (including Lebanon’s first pét-nat and piquette!) and aging vessels (Georgian qvevri, amphorae, neutral oak) to explore their potential. The grapes are sourced from organic vineyards in different parts of the country, and from a mix of soil types, with a focus on higher elevations. The resulting wines “run the gamut from eminently drinkable thirst-quenchers to chiseled vins de garde,” says Punch contributor John McCarroll. But, he says, Chami is not content with his own success. “Eddie’s been quietly tutoring the next generation of Lebanese winemakers, counteracting decades of brain drain and talent flight in Lebanon and ushering in what promises to be an incredibly bright future for one of the oldest wine regions on Earth.”
Bottles to know: Mersel’s trio of pét-nats under the Leb Nat label (get it?) are a great place to start, particularly the Gold and Pink Rosé, both of which partially lean on the native merwah grape.
