Stone Vine & Sun Wine Merchants Hampshire

Stone, Vine & Sun Wine Merchants - committed to sourcing superb wines that truly reflect the land they are grown on.

As autumn and cooler weather beckon, it’s time to highlight wines from The Rhône. Here we return to the wine-producing region of Stone, Vine & Sun’s roots. Arguably it’s where we lived up to our name - the Rhône is the region of stone (think of the south’s galet pudding-stones and the north’s granite), vines and sun - and earned our reputation: in both 2004 and 2005 we won the award for the International Wine Challenge Rhône Specialist Wine Merchant.  

For red wine there are really two Rhônes. There’s the much larger southern zone around Avignon, with a well-ordered hierarchy: Côtes du Rhône; Côtes du Rhône Villages; Côtes du Villages with a named village; and full appellations. This is the home of Grenache - the fundament for almost all reds - giver of berry and cherry flavoured wines with acid, tannin and heart. Reds in the northern vineyards close to the river are pure Syrah: here we work with four growers: choose Vendôme and Verzier for purity and finesse or Chave and Monier for power and concentration. Almost all of our Rhône wines are from grapes farmed with organic or bio-dynamic practice. Note that: all sixes of the same wine come with 10% and unsplit dozens at 15% off; there are four discounted mixed cases from the Rhône; and note a tasting of Rhône wines in Winchester on the 12th of October.

We also currently feature: value whites & reds (we can’t drink Gigondas every day of the week); Languedoc whites and Chablis; a broad selection from Piekenierskloof in the Cape; some terrific 2019 and 2020 Bordeaux (if you love ripe, lush and concentrated right bank wines do look at the just arrived wines of Mickael Moze-Berthon); and new shipments from Italy, introducing the intensely fruited Puglian wines of Michele Biancardi plus new high altitude Chianti Classico vintages from Susanna Grassi at I Fabbri in Greve.  From this selection there are eight more mixed dozens, all with 15% off the bottle prices.

Finally do check out the 12 wines selected by our four experienced wine lovers here at SVS, grouped as What we Drink at Home. All are simply reduced by 12.5% so you can try whichever catches your eye, and there’s a fun mixed dozen including one of each, six whites and six reds with 15% off too. Drink as we do!

Simon  Taylor