Wine Club: six sought-after bottles you won’t find anywhere else

Anthony and Olive Hamilton Russell love The Spectator and we love them. They have hosted more Spectator Winemaker Lunches than any other producer (they’ll be in our boardroom again next week) and it was only the afterglow of the splendidly bibulous Spectator/Hamilton Russell dinner at Tate Britain the night before lockdown that kept me going during the dark days that followed.

Anthony is a long-time subscriber to our organ and, through the kind offices of Laura Taylor – marketing director of Private Cellar – who has known and admired AHR and his remarkable wines for 25 years, he has paid us the enormous compliment of offering the latest vintages to us and us alone.

For the next four weeks, The Spectator will be the only place in the world – other than direct from the winery itself – through which to buy the following bottles and so sought-after are they, so darn tasty and in such strictly limited quantities that I strongly suggest you get cracking pretty damned quick if you’re interested. Once they’re gone, they’re gone.

As you know, Hamilton Russell Vineyards and the associated estates of Ashbourne and Southern Right are located in the Hemel-en-Aarde Valley near Hermanus, Walker Bay, South Africa – and the wines have some claim to be the finest in their respective categories in all the Cape.

The 2021 Southern Right Sauvignon Blanc (1) is worthy successor to the 2019 vintage, named one of the Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines. Using grapes sourced half from clay and half from sandstone soils the wine was fermented slowly using natural yeasts before spending time in old oak barrels.