BLANKbottle, Epileptic Inspiration, Elgin 2021 - 75cl
The label is a scan of Pieter Walser's brain. He started drawing his own BLANKbottle labels after a major epileptic fit in 2013 left him unable to look at a flickering computer screen, so he reached instead for scissors, lino and paint. Whatever rewired in his head that year, this is the wine that carries its name.
It is a single-vineyard Semillon, all of it from one rocky outcrop 233 metres up a south-east slope in the cool Elgin valley. Walser owns no vineyards. He drives thousands of miles each harvest chasing sites that interest him, and Elgin's mountain air gives this Semillon its nerve. Grapes were picked ripe, chilled overnight to four degrees, then whole-bunch pressed the next morning. Wild fermentation ran across amphora and a mix of new and old French oak, and the wine sat ten months on its lees before bottling.
That upbringing shows. The nose is savoury and nutty, more struck-flint and roasted hazelnut than orchard fruit, with stone fruit sitting underneath. The palate is lean and quietly built, 12.5% alcohol, bright acidity holding everything upright, and it closes on salt. This is Semillon with texture rather than weight. It drinks beautifully now and has the backbone to reward five or six years in the cellar, where the nuttiness deepens into something waxy and honeyed.
How to Serve
Pour it at 10-12 degrees, a touch warmer than instinct suggests, in a full white glass so the reductive, flinty notes have room to blow off. A short decant does it good on release. Steady chilling beats an ice bucket shock.
Where to Drink It
Noble Rot in Lamb's Conduit Street, whose list leans hard on this kind of characterful white. Brat in Shoreditch, where the wood-fired cooking suits its smoke. The wine room at Sager + Wilde on Paradise Row for a quieter pour.
Food Pairings
I would drink this with grilled mackerel and a squeeze of lemon, the smoke on the fish echoing the wine's flinty edge. It also handles roast chicken skin and brown butter, or a plate of Comte aged long enough to turn crystalline and nutty.
