Wine News Roundup: Week of 25 May 2026

Château Lafleur 2025 landed at £1,800 per three bottles and carried a Vin de France label for the first time in the estate's history, that single release set the tone for a week in which the wine world's most interesting moves came from producers stepping deliberately outside the expected frame.

Clos Pegase reopened in Calistoga after a full restoration, Grgich Hills released a single-vineyard old-vine Chardonnay tied directly to the 1976 Judgement of Paris, and two indigenous grapes, Timorasso in Piedmont and Xinomavro in northern Greece, continued building the kind of collector following that takes decades to earn.

Below, everything that mattered, plus the guides we published this week.

What We Published This Week

2018, 2019 & 2020 Champagne Vintages: A Collector's Window

Three consecutive fine Champagne vintages are hitting the market at once. Here's how to navigate the releases — and build a cellar across all three.

Michelin Guide South Australia 2027: What It Means for Wine Region Dining

Michelin's first Australian guide lands in October — and it covers Barossa, McLaren Vale and Clare Valley, not Sydney or Melbourne.

Lafleur 2025 Vin de France: A Historic Break from Pomerol

Château Lafleur 2025 debuts as the first Vin de France from the Guinaudeau family — 97pts, reduced allocation, and £1,800 per three bottles.

Koosah Vineyard Oregon Chardonnay: America's Most Coveted Bottle

Every bottle of Koosah Vineyard Chardonnay sells out before most collectors know it exists. Here's why Oregon's Eola-Amity Hills site is rewriting…

Hawke's Bay Chardonnay 2024: The Vintage That Changes Everything

The 2024 Hawke's Bay Chardonnay vintage — low yields, perfect ripening — is the clearest signal yet that this region belongs among the world's great…

Château Lascombes and Axel Heinz Rewrite the Rules

Axel Heinz launches La Côte Lascombes — a 100% Merlot sold in bottle only — as the Margaux second growth executes its most decisive stylistic break…

Burgundy Vineyard Prices 2025: New Records as Bordeaux Falls

Côte-d'Or premier cru Chardonnay hit €2.7m per hectare in 2025 — while Pauillac and Margaux posted their steepest declines in years.

Yarra Valley Phylloxera Replanting: A Region Reborn

Twenty years after phylloxera reached the Yarra Valley, producers from TarraWarra to Yeringberg are replanting smarter — and reshaping Australian…

Best Wine Bars in Atlanta (2026): A Neighborhood Guide to the City's Booming Scene

From Michelin-hotel pours in Buckhead to Eater Award-winning natural wine bars, Atlanta's wine scene has arrived. Here's where to drink.

Château Batailley Pauillac: The Classified Wine That Refuses to Overprice Itself

Château Batailley holds a 1855 fifth-growth classification and 63 hectares of Günz gravel — yet prices a fraction of its Pauillac neighbours.

Chateau Musar Head Winemaker Tarek Sakr: Making Wine Under Fire

Tarek Sakr has guided Chateau Musar through war, drones, and a 70% collapse in domestic sales. His philosophy: 'We live to make wine.'

Timorasso: Piedmont's Near-Extinct White Finds Its Moment

Timorasso was, not long ago, heading toward the same fate as dozens of Italian indigenous varieties that surrendered to the commercial pull of Pinot Grigio and Chardonnay. The grape had all but disappeared from Piedmont's vineyards, a casualty of post-war replanting decisions that favored yield and familiarity over character. What changed was the determination of a small group of producers in the Colli Tortonesi who refused to let it go. Decanter's coverage this week traces that near-extinction and the slow, producer-driven recovery that followed.

The case for Timorasso is easy to make once you've tasted it. The variety produces whites with the kind of structural depth, mineral backbone, age-worthiness, textural weight, that serious collectors associate with Burgundy's Chardonnay or Friuli's Ribolla Gialla, not with Piedmont, a region most of the world still thinks of in red. Allocations remain small and producer-direct access is often the only reliable route into the best bottles, which means the window to buy in before wider discovery closes is narrower than the variety's current profile suggests. For anyone building a cellar with an eye on undervalued Italian whites, the Colli Tortonesi is worth a detour. Read more →

Clos Pegase Reopens in Calistoga After Full Restoration

On 27 June 2026, Adair Family Wines will host the official grand opening of Clos Pegase in Calistoga, the Napa Valley estate founded in 1984 by art dealers Jan and Mitsuko Shrem and designed by postmodern architect Michael Graves, who was selected through a 1984 competition that drew 96 design teams. The New York Times has called it "a place of pilgrimage." When Adair Family Wines acquired the estate in 2024, a thorough assessment found leaking pipes, damaged walls, and deteriorating floors. Rather than patch, Jay and Tammi Adair closed for a complete restoration, temporarily relocating wine production to sister property Girard.

The reopening restores the original exterior palette, recovered in collaboration with the Michael Graves Architecture firm, and renovates the main tasting room, Founders bar, and courtyard. The estate's historic fountains are being revived, and a tribute garden planted with cherry trees honours Mitsuko Shrem. Festivities begin at 11 a.m. on 27 June with a ribbon-cutting, followed by afternoon tastings and tours. Wine club members and VIP guests attend free; general admission tickets are $75, with VIP experiences in timed sessions between 1 and 3 p.m., including a dedicated 3 p.m. session for art curators. Later this year, the estate launches the 2026 Artist Series, a new wine collection with original artwork on each label. The 27 June date is a fixed public window; if you're planning a Napa visit around harvest, this is the opening to anchor the trip around. Read more →

Xinomavro: The Greek Grape Pinot Noir Drinkers Are Reaching For

Wine Enthusiast's feature this week on Xinomavro arrives at a moment when the variety is moving from curiosity to conviction among collectors who track Burgundy and Barolo. The comparison is not a marketing stretch: Xinomavro, grown primarily in Naoussa and Amyndeon in northern Greece, shares Pinot Noir's translucency, its high acidity, and its tendency to reward patience in the cellar. It also shares Nebbiolo's tannic grip and its capacity to express site with unusual precision. Wine Enthusiast places its energy, complexity, and finesse alongside some of the world's most serious red wines.

What makes Xinomavro worth tracking now is the combination of improving viticulture, a generation of winemakers who trained abroad and returned with technical rigour, and prices that remain well below equivalent quality levels in Burgundy or Piedmont. The variety's name translates roughly as "acid black", a fair description of its youth, and a clue to its longevity. If you've been drinking Gevrey-Chambertin for the structure and Barolo for the complexity, Naoussa offers both at a fraction of the allocation pressure, and the producers who matter are still reachable without a mailing-list waitlist. Read more →

VNTG Opens at JW Marriott Marquis Dubai

Dubai's wine bar offer has historically been thin relative to the city's appetite for hospitality.

VNTG, which opened recently at the JW Marriott Marquis Hotel Dubai, is a direct attempt to fill that gap, a wine bar and deli occupying a lounge off the hotel's all-day eatery La Farine, with more than 350 labels on the walls and a retail deli stocked with cheeses, oils, and condiments available to take home.

The format is European enoteca by design: dark woods, leather chairs, two private tasting tables for group dinners, and a pricing model that lists the retail price plus corkage fee on each bottle. More than 55 wines are available by the glass, a number that puts it well ahead of most hotel wine programs in the region.

The food program carries the influence of chef Tom Allen, who departed Dinner by Heston for JW Marriott Marquis last year. Highlights from the menu include mussels with white wine, garlic and seaweed butter; bone marrow topped with snails; and a lamb ragù with braised shoulder, rigatoni, parmesan, and mint. The sommelier curates daily wine flights in three 75ml pours matched to guest preferences, a format that makes the 350-label list navigable rather than overwhelming. Charcuterie sharing plates start from Dhs110, and expect to pay around Dhs350 per head for a two-course meal with a wine flight. For visitors to Dubai who want a serious wine conversation alongside dinner, VNTG is the address to know. Read more →

Grgich Hills Releases the Paris '76 Chardonnay

Fifty years after Mike Grgich's 1973 Château Montelena Chardonnay beat the Burgundies at the Judgement of Paris, Grgich Hills Estate has released the Paris '76 Chardonnay, a single-vineyard, old-vine bottling designed to mark that anniversary. The estate describes it as a fresh and elegant expression built around balance, precision, and place.

The old-vine sourcing signals a deliberate focus on concentration and site character rather than the broad-shouldered style that defined California Chardonnay in the decades after 1976.

A single-vineyard, old-vine release tied to one of American wine's most documented moments is the kind of bottle that moves through a mailing list before it reaches retail, if you follow the estate, the time to act is now.

The Judgement of Paris remains one of the most cited events in American wine history, and Grgich Hills, the estate Mike Grgich founded after that victory, carries the story's direct lineage. For those who track Napa Chardonnay's evolution from the 1970s to now, this is a bottle with a specific provenance attached to every sip. Read more →

Hestan Napa Winemaker Dinner: Thomas Rivers Brown and Mark Dommen

On 28 May 2026, Hestan Napa hosted the second installment of its Winemaker Dinner Series, pairing chef Mark Dommen with winemaker Thomas Rivers Brown across a six-course menu featuring rare wines. Dinners of this format, a named winemaker, a chef with a defined point of view, and a table small enough to allow genuine conversation about the wines, are the kind of access that rarely appears on public booking platforms. The series is building a direct relationship between Hestan Napa and collectors who want context alongside the bottle rather than a standard tasting-room flight.

A six-course dinner with rare pours from Brown's portfolio is a different proposition from a seated flight, it's an evening built around the winemaker's own narrative of the vintages. For collectors planning Napa visits around harvest season, the Hestan Napa series is worth monitoring as it develops. Read more →

Boschendal Wine Dinner at Jimbaran Puri Bali

On 30 May 2026, Jimbaran Puri, A Belmond Hotel, Bali, hosted a Boschendal Wine Dinner on the shores of Jimbaran Bay. Boschendal is one of South Africa's oldest wine estates, and the dinner brought its wines to Bali for an evening pairing wine heritage, culinary craft, and coastal setting. The format, a named estate, a Belmond property, and a specific coastal location, is the kind of wine-travel crossover that defines how serious collectors now think about drinking well on the road. Events like this one rarely repeat on the same calendar; the Belmond network tends to rotate its wine partnerships across properties and seasons.

For travellers who plan itineraries around wine dinners rather than treating them as an afterthought, Jimbaran Puri's programming is worth monitoring. The bay setting at dusk, with South African wines on the table, is a specific kind of pleasure that the Belmond context delivers with consistency. Read more →

Dalmatia, New York Sparkling Wine, and Petit Manseng in Virginia

Three regional stories from Decanter this week point in the same direction: collectors and travellers are looking beyond the canonical appellations with increasing seriousness. Decanter's Dalmatia piece traces a coastal Croatian wine trail that moves well off the standard tourist circuit, a region where indigenous varieties are being made with growing precision by producers working limestone and karst soils. The combination of Adriatic light, seafood, and wines that are genuinely difficult to find outside the country makes Dalmatia one of the more compelling wine-travel propositions in Europe right now.

New York's sparkling wine story is a longer arc. Decanter's feature covers the decades-long effort by producers across the Finger Lakes and Long Island to build a serious méthode traditionnelle category, a project that has moved from ambition to credibility without much fanfare outside the state. Meanwhile, Decanter's Virginia piece makes the case for Petit Manseng as the state's most distinctive white variety, a grape from Jurançon in southwest France that has found an unlikely second home in Virginia, producing wines with residual sweetness balanced by the variety's naturally ferocious acidity. All three regions are producing wines that reward the collector willing to look past the label. Read more →

China and Japan at Decanter World Wine Awards 2025

Decanter's coverage of the DWWA 2025 results this week highlighted strong performances from both China and Japan, two markets that have been building production quality steadily over the past decade but whose wines remain underrepresented in most Western collectors' cellars. Japan's focus on Koshu and domestic Chardonnay has been well-documented, but the DWWA results suggest the range of varieties and styles achieving medal-level quality is broadening. China's results point to continued improvement in regions like Ningxia, where producers have invested heavily in both viticulture and winemaking infrastructure.

For collectors who track emerging appellations, the DWWA is one of the more reliable early signals, the competition's scale means that medal-winning wines from smaller markets represent genuine quality rather than category novelty. The specific producers and scores from the 2025 results are worth pulling directly from Decanter's full coverage. Read more →

The thread running through this week's news, from Timorasso's recovery in Piedmont to Xinomavro's growing following, from Clos Pegase's architectural reopening to the DWWA's East Asian results, is that the wine world's geography of quality keeps expanding.

The appellations that defined serious collecting twenty years ago remain important, but the most interesting conversations are increasingly happening at the edges.

Next week, the 2025 Bordeaux en primeur campaign continues its final releases, and the Burgundy land price data we covered this week will sharpen the question every collector is already asking: where does value live now? If this is the kind of insider detail you look for in a glass, join the club, we'll keep pouring.