Bruno Besa | Amber with pink highlights. Open, mature, intense nose, with dried apricots, orange blossom, volatile yet complex and intriguing. Rather flat, almost tannic, stalky palate. Astringent finish. | 82

Andrew Jefford | Deep, vivid orange. Amply oxygen-influenced but not “oxidized” with leafy, humus-like, full- forest complexities in soft and harmonious style. Some fresh russet-apple fruit and rubbed apple- leaves, too, but nothing cidery. Quietly attractive and intriguing, and for me not in any sense faulty; indeed, not even notably confronting. Simply a different genre, and given my disappointment at some of the neutrality evident in the reductively- fashioned Ribolla wines, this seems warm, nourishing, intriguing, and welcome. There’s a burnished creamy wealth, too. On the palate, this is deep, searching, with ample tannins; these combine with sustained though not high acidity to give the wine an attractive bite which, once again, has nothing to do with oxidation. There is a big cascade of autumn fruit (apples, pears, cranberries), but still not a lot of cheese, curd, or tofu (Ribolla can do these, too). Good, successful orange wine, which Ribolla has sustained though without stamping its character clearly on the wine. No matter; lovely drinking all the same. | 92

Michael Palij | Volatile acidity is off the chart in this wine. It’s cloudy. And orange. Confession time: I’m old, I’m boring, I’m classically trained and deeply out of touch with what the youth of today find appealing in the wine bars of Soho and Shoreditch. When is > 1g/l of VA OK? Never. | 70