Bar Cart: The Natural Wine to Convert Conventional Wine Drinkers
Anders Frederik Steen & Anne Bruun Blauert’s 2020 grenache blend is a marvel.
Anders Frederik Steen and Anne Bruun Blauert, the Danish couple making poetically named wines in the Ardèche region of France, in many ways epitomize the natural wine movement. They use organic and biodynamically farmed “grapes and only grapes,” spontaneously ferment with natural yeasts, don’t fine or filter, and add zero sulphur to their wines.
Steen and Blauert’s wines are one-offs, and the name of this Anders Frederik Steen & Anne Bruun Blauert 2020 wine doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue: The sound of people clapping improves when it’s raining. Made from grenache noir and grenache blanc, this wine is technically a rosé but it drinks like a red. The nose is profoundly floral—a field’s worth of lilac and daffodils drift up from the glass, showing the otherwise imperceptible white grape component. The taste, on the other hand, is all red, though it does show more like a gamay or pinot than it does a big, bold grenache. It is dominated by a scintillating umeboshi (salted Japanese plum) quality where the combination of salty, sour, and sweet begs for it to be paired with food.
It’d be best to grab a bottle of this when you see it—or opt for something else by Steen and Blauert. They’re remarkably consistent in their uniqueness.
