Paxton Graciano, Australia

Lighter in body with distinct savoury and white pepper characters filled out with bright red fruits. Light tannins make this wine ready to drink young. Bright, fresh, crunchy and very, very moreish. An incredibly smashable summer time red.

It’s a wine we found on our buying trip to McLaren Vale in February 2019. When a bunch of winemakers take you to lunch to taste their wines. When the restaurant is in an idyllic location on the top of cliffs overlooking a bay with white sand and calm azure waters. When the winemakers get you gently sozzled before taking you to play beach cricket. Well it's easy to lose perspective. All the wines tasted great. The winemakers were all great guys. I'll buy everything!

Not all holiday purchases make sense when you get home to the real world. That poncho you picked up in Chile because it's 'really quite practical' only for you to realise that it looks a bit daft on Basildon High Street. We've all been there.

So it was with much relief that I found that the Paxton Graciano, imported exclusively for us on the back of that boozy lunch, makes as much sense back home in Cornwall as it did under the McLaren Vale sun.

Paxton produce a fabulous range of organic, biodynamic wines and, like many McLaren Vale winemakers, they've been excited at the prospect for Mediterranean varieties in South Australia. Graciano is a Spanish varietal grown primarily in the Rioja region. After some research David Paxton decided to graft one row of Graciano onto some old Chardonnay vines at to see what the result would be. A seemingly bonkers experiment went well...