June arrives like a deep breath after a long year — slower mornings, lighter nights, and the first real taste of summer on our lips. This month, we’re honouring that shift with a journey across some of Europe’s most crystalline wine regions, beginning in the foothills of northern Italy, moving through the stone-and-vine villages of Alsace, and resting finally among Austria’s steep, sun-washed terraces. This month’s selection is an ode to summer fruit at its most luminous: cherry-red rosatos humming with redcurrant and rhubarb, and whites that taste like biting into a chilled pear, a just-ripe peach, or a crisp green apple. These are bottles made for the moments we wait all year for — barefoot dinners on the balcony, laughter that stretches past sunset, tables scattered with bowls of fruit and plates meant for sharing. These are wines that capture fruit in its most honest form, they’re expressive without being loud, refreshing without being simple. I chose them for the way they belong to this exact moment — to garden tables and open windows, to friendships that feel like sunshine, to the kind of evenings where nobody checks the time. However you’re spending June — solo with a good book, surrounded by people you love, or somewhere in between — these bottles are here to soften the edges, spark conversation, and turn an ordinary night into something you’ll remember.
Heinz W, Weixelbaum, 2024
- Producer: Weixelbaum
- Vintage: 2024
- Alcohol: 12%
- Drink: 10°C
- Price: €25
- Region: Kamptal, Austria
- Grapes: Grüner Veltlinder
- Drink at: The Seafood Cafe, Pearl Brasserie
Grüner Veltliner is Austria’s signature grape, and in the Kamptal it finds a voice that’s both electric and deeply grounded. At Weingut Weixelbaum in the village of Strass, Heinz and Gabi Weixelbaum farm 22 hectares of their own vineyards by hand — steep parcels of ancient urgestein and loess soils that Heinz prunes hard each spring, choosing concentration over convenience. The cellar is modern, the approach is precise, but the soul of the place is generational: a medium-sized family winery doing everything themselves, from vine to bottle.
The 2024 is classic Grüner at its most alive. It pours light and bright, with lifted aromas of green apple, pear, and lemon zest, then that unmistakable flicker of white pepper, fennel, and celery. On the palate it’s dry and mineral, with green gooseberry and citrus carried on zesty, medium acidity and a light, satisfying body. There’s a clean, gently spicy finish that lingers just long enough to make you reach for another sip. At 12% alcohol and farmed organically, it’s built for the table: white fish, crisp salads, roast chicken with herbs, or anything where freshness and a little peppery lift belong. This is a wine that feels like early summer in the northeast of Austria — cool-climate, transparent, and quietly powerful. Drink now or worth watching as it unwinds in the bottle.
La Cabane, Domaine Léon Boesch, 2023
- Producer: Domaine Léon Boesch
- Vintage: 2023
- Alcohol: 11.5%
- Drink: 10°C
- Price: €25
- Region: Alsace
- Grapes: Pinot Blanc
- Drink at: Mamo, 505 Dingle, The Glass Curtain (cork)
Some families inherit land; the Boeschs inherited a mountain. Eleven generations deep and established in 1640, Domaine Léon Boesch sits tucked into the Vallée Noble between Soultzmatt and Westhalten, where the highest peaks of the Vosges Mountains shelter east-facing slopes of sandstone and clay. In the 1970s, Matthieu’s father Gérard quietly bought up these hillside parcels when neighbours chased easier, flatter ground. When Matthieu returned in 1999, he brought biodynamics to the vines and restraint to the cellar — native yeasts, old oak vats, minimal sulphur, and a belief that the wine should speak before the winemaker does.
"La Cabane” is Pinot Blanc with a whisper of Auxerrois, and it carries the scent of an Alsatian spring. At first it’s shy, then it opens: white flowers, peach, and the persistent lilt of blossoming trees that seems to live in the limestone here. On the palate it’s generous but precise — pears and crisp melon, lemon skin, a flicker of ginger, stone minerality running underneath. Fermented in oak and aged on gross lees until spring, then on fine lees until August, it gains a full, velvety texture without losing its energy. Low sulphur, biodynamic, and born from vines planted in 1980 and 1992, it’s the kind of wine that disappears at the table. Quiche with spring vegetables, roast chicken with herbs, or just a bowl of fruit in late sun — it belongs to all of them. This is Alsace at its most honest: rooted, evolving, and quietly luminous.
Triglia, Sette, 2025
- Producer: Sette
- Vintage: 2025
- Alcohol: 12.5%
- Drink: 10°C
- Price: €28
- Region: Nizza
- Grapes: Barbera, Syrah
- Drink at: Host, Piglet
This is the kind of rosé that makes you rethink rosé. Sette Rosato comes from a vineyard nobody asked for — a 6-hectare hillside in the heart of Nizza Monferrato that Gino Della Porta and Gianluca Colombo fell madly, illogically in love with back in 2017. They farm it organically, almost defiantly, and this bottle is their love letter to Barbera’s wilder side. Made mostly from younger Barbera vines with a dash of Syrah, it sees just two days of skin contact for that luminous cherry-red color and texture, then wild-yeast fermentation in stainless steel and seven months of quiet aging before bottling. The name “Sette” nods to the mystical number seven, and like the project itself, this wine refuses to be useful in the way the market expects.
In the glass it’s all softness and intention: dried roses drift across the nose, then the palate opens to pure summer fruit — sour cherry, redcurrant, rhubarb — lit up by a line of salinity that keeps you reaching for the next sip. It’s fresh, mineral, a little bit perky, and entirely unserious in the best way. 13% alcohol, wild-fermented, organically grown, and made because they wanted to drink it themselves. Chill it hard and pour with grilled fish, roasted vegetables, or simply as an aperitif when the evening is warm and the conversation is easy. This is what happens when people who know wine too well decide to make something just because they love it
Col Rosso, Marino Colleoni, 2022
- Producer: Marino Colleoni
- Vintage: 2022
- Alcohol: 13.5%
- Drink: 12°C
- Price: €42
- Region: Montalcino
- Grapes: Sangiovese
- Drink at: Fawn, D'Plier Street, Uno Mas
Most vineyards are planted. This one was discovered. When Marino Colleoni and his wife Luisa stumbled across old vine branches pushing through the brush on Montalcino’s northern edge in 1989, they weren’t looking to make wine — they were just trying to clear land. What they found beneath the woods were centuries-old terraces held up by dry-stone walls, a forgotten patch of Sangiovese Grosso waiting to be brought back to life. By 2000 they harvested their first fruit, and by 2005 their first Brunello was released after five patient years in cask.
Today they farm just over three hectares — half their own, half rented — at nearly 500 meters above sea level, on some of Montalcino’s highest, north-facing slopes. It’s a place of forest, wind, and a rare mix of sand, limestone, and volcanic rock. Marino has farmed organically from day one, often without treatments at all, and in the cellar he moves with the same restraint: native ferments, a fortnight on skins, then nine months in old botti until the wine says it’s ready.
The 2022 Rosso is his everyday table Sangiovese, but “everyday” feels like an understatement. It’s dark ruby yet translucent , with a nose of red cherry, black cherry, purple plum, and a flicker of spice and balsamic. The palate is medium-bodied and bright, lifted and perfumed from the cooler vintage, with easy acidity and the kind of honest, savory fruit that makes you reach for another glass — and another slice of pizza. At 13% alcohol and built to drink over the next few years, it’s direct, sincere, and enveloping, just like Marino himself. This is Sangiovese without costume or ceremony: pure, detailed, fine, and made for the terrace after dinner, for date night, for parents, for pasta, for grilled vegetables, for life as it actually happens.