Wine Club: six seriously tasty wines with 20% off

I have quite the spring in my step as I write and no, clever clogs, not just because of my regular mid-morning sharpener,
satisfying and restorative though it was. What do you take me for? No, it’s because I have nothing but good news to impart this week and I’m confident that your happiness is secure.

We have six very tasty, exceedingly easy-going wines on offer this week; we have an extremely generous 20 per cent discount on all bottles and — yippee! — our celebrated Spectator Winemaker Lunches are back with a bang, kicking off on Friday 17 September with many more to follow.

Our last such vinous knees-up in the boardroom before plague and pestilence struck was in March 2020 with the ever-urbane Philip Addis of Domaine du Grand Mayne, the very estate whose wines we’re delighted to offer this week.

Grand Mayne is in the Côtes de Duras near Bordeaux, roughly halfway between Saint-Émilion and Bergerac. Once run-down and barely functioning, the property was restored in the 1980s and, thanks to two incredibly successful crowd-funding campaigns in the past few years, it’s now going great guns, owned by some 900 canny wine lovers and producing seriously flavoursome wines at extremely modest prices.

The 2020 Domaine du Grand Mayne Sauvignon Blanc (1) is fresh, lively and concentrated with plenty of citrus and hints of nettles and cut grass. Well-judged lees contact adds weight to the wine and a tiny splash of Sémillon adds creaminess. Winemaker Mathieu Crosnier has worked in both the Loire and New Zealand so knows Sauvignon Blanc inside out and this is a beautifully-constructed, modestly-priced gem.