Maine's First Natural Wine Festival 40 importers and wine makers by the water in Freeport Maine Wild Wine Fest Saturday the 21st is the inaugural Maine Wild Wine Fest! Last autumn I had a few hours of free time and I decided that Maine should have a Natural Wine Fair. So I set about organizing one! Now it's 10 days away and it's crunch time, but it is all coming together and looks like it's going to be really fun. I have about 40 presenters coming including wine makers from across America, Fredi Torres from Spain is the lone European,... Continue reading

ALL THE BUBBLES!!! Champagne, Cava, PetNat, Prosecco ALL THE BUBBLES!!! I've never tried to do this before and it seems kind of crazy but here are all the sparkling wines Devenish has got! Champagne Tarlant Cuvee Louis Approx $160/btl You can find this at Browne Trading and the Lil General Store The Tarlant family has been growing grapes in Champagne since the late 1600s. at the beginning of the 20th century Louis Tarlant was running the vineyards and also mayor of Oeuilly, a major town in Champagne. Champagne had been internationally famous for at least a century already, but there... Continue reading

My Favorite Wines of the Year Available for Christmas Vacqueyras, Vermouth, Cava, Riesling Holiday Wines 2021 Wow, it feels surreal that it's already almost Christmas! I know: Christmas and Thanksgiving are always the same distance apart and I shouldn't be surprised but every year it's a sprint to get everything done. It's been a crazy year and we're sending it out with a bang! Here's a short list of the wines I'm particularly excited to celebrate with and where to find them. Anima Mundi Cami del Xops Approximately $24/btl Find it at X Vault, Friends and Family, The Vault in... Continue reading

Limited Offer of Exciting Burgundies Savigney-les-Beaune, Hautes Cotes de Nuits, Declassified Puligny Montrachet Burgundies for the Holidays! Village Wines, one of our importers, recently had a limited Burgundy pre-sale of some fantastic wines. Burgundy is a complicated place of tiny producers with multiple holdings and a bewildering array of appellations and classifications all lain on top of each other. The exciting wines are often so expensive that they're unattainable. For these reasons Devenish doesn't do a lot with Burgundy; however I couldn't pass up this chance to snag some of these gems just in time for Christmas! I always say... Continue reading

Thanksgiving Wines: Orange wine, Petnat Prosecco, Fizzy Red Gruner Veltliner, Chilean Pais Thanksgiving Wines This year feels like it's been non stop and now Thanksgiving is in sight. Thanksgiving has always been one of my favorite holidays and I'm looking forward to really enjoying it and...maybe even taking a break! Here are some of the wines I'm particularly excited about this year. -Ned Ceppaiolo Cepparosso 2020 Approximately $32/btl You can find this at Treats, Maine and Loire, and Cafe Louis. Or of course you can order it from any wine store. Ceppaiolo is Danilo Marcucci's little private wine project in... Continue reading

Making Wine with my Heroes in Umbria Last Month Elbow Deep in Fermenting Grapes! Four Days in Umbria I just got back from Italy! I was there in Umbria for all of 3.5 days, but somehow it felt more like 10. I managed to visit 8 wineries and help make wine at 3 of them! It didn't feel rushed, but it was so immersive and intense that it felt like longer. I'm going to write a series of emails to cover what I did in some detail. In this email I'm going to cover Ceppaiolo and Dinamo Dinamo Here's a... Continue reading

Public Wine Tastings are back! Wednesday and Thursday Happy Second Week of Summer! French Picnic Wines Wednesday the 29th, 4-6 pm At Maine & Loire Wednesday I'll be at Maine and Loire pouring French picnic wines. I've gotten pretty used to taking it easy and hiding in my warehouse over the Pandemic, but I'm really going to try to clean up and shake off any antisocial habits from the Pandemic. I'm going all out, shaving and wearing a shirt. I promise: the shirt will even have sleeves! In all seriousness we'll have great wines open: Telquel, Pepiere, Aubron Pet Nat,... Continue reading

Wine Tasting at Terlingua and Dinner at Chaval! Here comes Wine Week! This coming week is Portland Maine Wine Week and I'm hosting a pair of events! Tuesday the 15th at 2pm I'm hosting a traditional Chilean lunch (Almuerzo) with Justin at Terlingua. Southern Chile was the last place I visited before the start of the pandemic and I'm excited that one of my first public events in the past year and a half will center around the wine makers I met. This is just $50 per person! Terlingua Tickets Sunday the 20th, to close out wine week, I'm hosting... Continue reading

Rare Library Releases from Domaine de Chevalerie in Bourgeuil Domaine de Chevalerie in Bourgeuil is so awesome that it's hard for me to know where to start.... so I'll just start with the beginning. Domaine de Chevalerie dates back to 1640 when a Pierre Caslot moved to the village of Restigne on the Loire and began farming grapes. Over the centuries his descendants acquired some of the best vineyard plots in and around the town until in 2012 Pierre's great grandson x10 who was also named Pierre owned nearly 100 acres. This is Bourgeuil, where the only AOC approved grape... Continue reading

The Most Exciting Wines for the Holidays!!! Here we are! We have made it to the holidays! The end of this year is in sight; Christmas, Hanukkah, the Solstice are all right around the corner. Without further ado here's the list of wines I am particularly excited about and promoting for Christmas. Cantina Sociale di Gattinara 2011 How crazy is it that the current vintage of this wine is 2011!? This Nebbiolo from Gattinara, up in high Piedmont, spends 2 years in Slovenian oak botti, then 1 year in cement tank, and a further 6 months in bottle....minimum. The aroma... Continue reading

Happy Thanksgiving! Below are the wines I'm most excited about and where to find them. Yes, this is going to be a hard Thanksgiving (I'm having Zoom guests at dinner) but I am holding onto every little piece of normalcy and pleasure that I can! What can I even write here that's meaningful and unique? We're all feeling cut off and unsure of the future. We may be coping and processing the hardships differently but we're all struggling with the same basic circumstances. At least in that knowledge we know that everyone is missing seeing people they care about. Staying... Continue reading

Online Wine Tasting with Roberto Henriquez in Chile 2019 Roberto Henriquez Releases are Here!! To celebrate I'm doing a live chat with Roberto this Saturday at 2pm on Instagram Live On Saturday anyone can just go on Instagram, navigate to the Devenishwines instagram page, and then join the live chat! Open a bottle of his wine, listen as we talk about wine making in rural Chile, and how his wine making has evolved. Info on all the wines and where they're available below Sunday Take Out 4 Course Wine Dinner Sunday I'll be taking part in a virtual wine dinner!... Continue reading

Eduardo came to Etna from Tenerife (the Canary Island) back in 2014. He had studied viticulture and agronomy and there was more going on up on Etna. He landed a pretty sweet job as wine maker for Andrea Franchetti at Passopisciaro. Passopisciaro is one of the top producers on Etna and is dedicated to recognizing the many different vineyard sites. So Eduardo got his foot in the door and started looking for vineyards to rent or buy. He slowly got access to some and began making his own wines, I think when I was here in 2016 he was on... Continue reading

Summer's here and so are the Wines! The 4th of July has come and past. I would normally write something here about how amazing all these wines to follow are, but it just doesn't feel right to project the same persona when we're in the situation we're in. The sun is warm, the air is humid, the tomatoes are growing like weeds. But this isn't like any summer before it. We've been dealing with the corona virus for going on 5 months now and while we've all evolved through many stages of processing it.... but the reality of the virus... Continue reading

We Commissioned Art to Help Restaurant Workers...it's for sale! The first week of the pandemic and shut down were a chaotic scramble to figure out how to respond. I am very fortunate that my business is not customer facing. I had hard decisions to make but nothing like what many businesses I supply wine had to deal with. I was looking for anyway I could help people who were hurting more than me and a friend on social media suggested buying art to support artists and the arts community that is such an important part of Maine and Portland. So... Continue reading

Collecapretta is an amazing family winery in Terzo la Pieve, not far from Spoleto in central Umbria. The winery takes it's name from the hill that it's on: Collecapretta or "hill of the goat". The hill is said to have been known by this name since the Romans. The Mattioli family have been here for many hundreds of years. It's a small rural place that is rather exposed and windy. They call themselves farmers and not wine makers. On my last visit they said they were happy that the world had come to appreciate them but that they will just... Continue reading

Virtual Wine Tastings this Week! Virtual Wine Tasting Friday with Maine and Loire, Matt Mollo of SelectioNaturel, and the wines of Collecapretta Annalisa Mattioli with their press The Mattioli family has been in the tiny hamlet the Roman's once called Collecapretta (hill of the goats) since the 1100's. For generations the Mattioli have been cultivating the rugged hillsides of southern most Umbria. Located just outside of Spoleto, in the near-impossible-to-find borgo called Terzo la Pieve, today's farm is a scant 8 hectares in total; 2 planted to a mixture of local olives trees, 2 ha of farro and other ancient... Continue reading

After lunch with Mauricio Gonzalez Matt and I went over to visit Manuel Moraga with our new friend Patrick as a guide. We made the short drive to Cacique Maravilla and Manuel was in the driveway to meet us. People had told me he also had a very memorable mustache, so I had no problem picking him out. Manuel looks like an exceptionally solid guy. He just always seemed to have a wide and confident stance, like he was always expecting someone to try to push him over. Maybe he was, he had a very affectionate 100+ pound pitbull with... Continue reading

Virtual Wine Tasting Friday with Absentee Winery The most exciting CA winery I've found in....a long time Absentee is the most exciting and important winery I've picked up in the last 12 months. When was the last time I wrote an email like this about a California winery?! California occupies a huge place in the worlds cultural consciousness. Say California to someone and they immediately think of wide open spaces, rebels without causes, confidant people doing things their own way, Hollywood and wine country. Reality though is that the vast majority of CA wine is made industrially by guys in... Continue reading

Stories from my Crazy Wine Trip to Chile Wine Making in Southern Chile is Insane 2 weeks ago I was pressing grapes in southern Chile And I was doing it by hand over a bamboo mat! Earlier this month I went to rural southern Chile to seek out a metaphorical legendary lost city of wine making. It was crazy on it's own, but now in the perspective of the pandemic and shut down of normal life it seems even more surreal! In a normal world I would have come back and hosted all kinds of events to share what I... Continue reading

Saturday afternoon I went with part of Roberto's crew over to Santa Juana to harvest some plums and to move water in the vineyard. I had no idea what that meant but I jumped at the chance to spend some time getting to know the group of young guys working for Roberto. It was about a 45 minute drive and we listened to the most eclectic mix of Pablo Neruda set ro rock music, Chilean folk music, reggaeton, and Cumbia. It was not and the drive made us all drowsy so first thing when we got there was to mix... Continue reading

Monday we made the three hour drive up from Bio Bio to visit Gonzalez Bastias in the Maule valley. We took our time and had some street food in the working city of Talca. We ran into intense street demonstration between young women protesting for equal rights and saw them get confronted by riot police. Chile is in an intersting situation right now. They're still moving on from the rule of Augusto Pinochet (a brutal military dictator who ruled until 1990) and are about to vote on a new constitution. The country has modernized quickly but it's happened at different... Continue reading

Mauricio was born a couple hours north of Bio Bio up in the town of Talca in Chile's central valley. He worked at a couple wineries up in northern Chile, then over in Mendoza AR, before starting his own project down here in Bio Bio. He said (in the video you can watch below) that he moved down here because it was a nicer place to live, to make wine on his own terms, and for he and his family's quality of life. He said that up north in the industrial vineyards he had worked in his kids couldn't play... Continue reading

In early March 2020 I got to spend several days with Roberto Henriquez during harvest. Roberto grew up in the area around Bio Bio and had the experience of making wine with his grandfather when he was younger but then went on to other things. He's a pretty awesome drummer and has an album his band put out years ago. After spending some time as a musician Roberto got into a university program studying Agronomy. If I understood correctly, there aren't official wine making programs in Chile; you have to study Agronomy and it's considered engineering by the government and... Continue reading

The disaster in public health and the economy caused by the spread of covid-19 is unlike anything we’ve experienced before. In modern times we've never had a new virus emerge and create a pandemic. The resulting economic shock is also unique. All of our recent economic crises started as asset bubbles or liquidity crunches that first affected the financial industry before trickling down to Main St America. The covid-19 economic crisis is going in the opposite direction: it has hit Main Street first as small businesses close to protect the health of themselves and the public. Consumer spending is 70%... Continue reading