Welcome to July wine club, Summer in the City. The heat wave is back, the concrete radiating and the air thick enough to chew. This is when the city shows its truth: shirts clinging, buses like ovens, people out of the office with sweat running down their necks between meetings and martinis. It’s also when wine makes the most sense.
My introduction to natural wine wasn’t in vineyards. It was in wine bars — New York’s East Village, the 11th in Paris, a back alley in Hackney, always after work, always when the city was too hot to think. Those glasses are etched in my memory for one reason: they healed. They were cold, alive, and honest. A chilled Gamay that tasted like shade. A Loire white that cut like a sea breeze. A pet nat that fizzed the humidity right off your skin.
This club is a love letter to those moments. Natural wines that refresh, not perform. Wines with texture and tension, built for fire escapes, for 5pm pours when the AC can’t keep up, for terraces and takeout and taxi rides with the windows down. The city in summer demands it: glass after glass of cooling, electric, life-giving wine. That’s what we’re pouring.
M & C Lapierre, Morgon 2024
- Producer: M & C Lapierre
- Vintage: 2024
- Alcohol: 12.5%
- Drink: 10°C
- Price: €38
- Region: Morgon
- Grapes: Gamay
- Drink at: Delahunt, Darog
Our story starts in Morgon, a natural wine haven for those searching for bottles made free of additives. At Domaine Lapierre they cultivate vines organically and ferment wines without any additives at all. Founded in 1909, the estate now spans 18 hectares of Gamay Noir à Jus Blanc, rooted mainly in Morgon with plots across Beaujolais. They believe excellence depends on four essentials, people, soil, climate, and grape variety.
It started when Marcel Lapierre took over in 1973. Guided by Jules Chauvet, the father of the natural wine movement, he chose to vinify without added sulfur, an avant-garde act that helped redefine Beaujolais. Today his children, Camille and Mathieu, carry that legacy forward. Whole bunches are fermented in wooden vats by semi-carbonic maceration, then matured in older oak with nothing added.
The 2024 Marcel Lapierre Morgon is a benchmark. Ripe cherry, wild raspberry, violets, and a subtle hint of licorice rise from the glass. On the palate, silky tannins, fine granite minerality, and the balance of lightness and richness that gives Morgon ten years of aging potential. This is 100% organic Gamay, a pure, vibrant expression of terroir. Serve slightly chilled at 14ºC–16ºC with charcuterie, roast poultry, or lentils.
Marie Tibault & Frantz Saumon, La Cave se Rebiffe
- Producer: Frantz Saumon
- Vintage: 2024
- Alcohol: 11%
- Drink: 8°C
- Price: €30
- Region: Loire Valley, france
- Grapes: Gamay, Grolleau, Malbec (Côte)
- Drink at: St Francis, Mount Juliet, L'attitude 51
Next glass, to the Loire, where Frantz Saumon’s of "The Cellar Rebels” makes an array of beautiful wines. Frantz is not from winemaking stock, after a career in forestry management in Canada, he returned home in the mid-90s to set up his domaine in Huisseau, at the foot of the famed plateau between Tours and Orléans. What began with 3 hectares is now 6, planted to Chenin Blanc, Sauvignon Blanc, and a half-hectare of red grapes on sandy clay, limestone, and flint. Everything is farmed organically, hand-harvested, fermented with indigenous yeasts, and bottled with very restricted sulfur.
His Pet Nat Rosé, La Cave se Rebiffe is méthode ancestrale at its most joyful. Gamay, Grolleau, and a touch of Côt from Montlouis give a salmon-pink fizz, cloudy and alive. This is wine once over. Bottled before the first fermentation finishes, it traps wild raspberry, ripe strawberry, white pepper, and herbal lift under a crown cap. No disgorging, no dosage, just delicate, frothy bubbles and a haze that signals life in the bottle.
On the palate it’s crisp, dry, and beautifully balanced, with a touch of sweetness rounding out its zingy acidity. The result is elegant, refreshing, and dangerously drinkable, a natural pink fizz that pours a glorious rosé. Crack it in the sun for apéritif with a picnic basket in the park. This is Pet Nat with pedigree: the oldest sparkling method, reborn through six hectares of limestone and flint, 800-year-old tuffeau caves, and a cellar that rebels with swagger.
Emile Balland, Lombeline, 2024
- Producer: Emile Balland
- Vintage: 2024
- Alcohol: 12%
- Drink: 10°C
- Price: €18
- Region: Loire Valley, france
- Grapes: Sauvignon Blanc
- Drink at: Fallon and Byrne, Dax,Woolen mills, Hartley's
Lombeline is Emile Balland’s Sauvignon Blanc twice over. Grown on 9 hectares, one in Sancerre, eight in the Coteaux du Giennois above Bonny-sur-Loire and Beaulieu-sur-Loire — it comes from calcareous soils threaded with silex and clay. Fermented and held only in stainless steel, nothing is added to blur its line. The 2024 pours bright and precise, lime, lemon, and gooseberry edged with subtle herbal notes, wild greenery, and that wet-stone tension the Loire gave Sauvignon Blanc its name for — sauvage, wild. Vibrant acidity drives a crisp, mineral finish. This is food-friendly, elegant, and unmistakably Loire.
This is also why you see Sauvignon Blanc on wine lists by the glass. Born in the Loire and Bordeaux in the 1500s, it spent centuries as a blending grape until the 1960s–70s, when Robert Mondavi’s oak-aged “Fumé Blanc” recast it as a premium dry pour in American restaurants. Then Marlborough happened. In the 70s and 80s, New Zealand’s punchy passionfruit, grapefruit, and fresh-cut grass style made it a smash hit on on-trade menus — aromatic, high-acid, instantly recognizable, and affordable to pour. From the 90s to today, that demand made it a global staple.
Because of that acidity and aromatic punch, it works by the glass. Loire versions like Lombeline bring it back to origin: mineral-driven, green apple, flint — not tropical, but electric. It cuts through goat cheese, shellfish, and green vegetables without fatigue, and it holds its line from first sip to last in the glass. That’s why it’s there: crisp, refreshing, and built to sell the next one.
Domaine de Saint Cyrgues, Salamndre 2025
- Producer: Domaine de Saint Cyrgues
- Vintage: 2025
- Alcohol: 12%
- Drink: 10°C
- Price: €20
- Region: Nimes, france
- Grapes: Grenache Blanc
- Drink at: Frank's, Hera, The Winding Stair, Ballymaloe House
Salamandre is Domaine de Saint Cyrgues’ Grenache Blanc. From the southern slopes of the Costières de Nîmes, near St-Gilles, where vines have grown for centuries on pudding stones, flint, and gravel laid down by the Rhône and Durance. Certified organic since 2016, the domaine is run by Jean-Pierre and Loïc Lefaud, who took over in 2015 from Guy de Mercurio. Ancient land, light touch, just grapes, soil, and time.
This is an orange wine that drinks like a white. Ten days on skins gives a gentle entry point, floral orange blossom, ripe peach, citrus zest, white peach and apricot, with a twist of orange peel and just the right amount of tannic grip. Textural but not overpowering, it finishes dry and gently savoury, mouthwatering and clean. Smoky, approachable, food-friendly.
And that’s why it’s in the box. You can’t have a bougie wine bar without a bougie orange wine by the glass, it makes no sense. This is the bridge, skin-contact structure with white-wine drinkability. Pour it for mezze, grilled halloumi, spiced Moroccan or Indian dishes, herby chicken, brie, burrata. Ideal for sunny afternoons, BBQs, or sharing with friends. Certified organic, 12.5%, and built to convert the orange-curious. Summer in a glass, with a little grip to remind you it’s serious.