Hi friends! It's been a while since we touched base so we thought we'd reach out and let you know what we’ve been up to!
Europe: Summer 2022
Mark and Alex recently returned from France and Catalunya where they toured vineyards, helped out with harvest and got to work bottling our new house wine, cuvée Myla 2021, which we will release mid-November!
Mark with our friend and wine maker Frédéric Brouca
Cuvée Myla is resting in a clay amphora in the Languedoc as we speak and promises to be delicious!
Say hi to the first Arlo house wine "Myla"
Mark doing the dirty work
From the cellar
We are extremely excited to be offering wild and energetic wines of the equally wild and energetic Sebastien Chatillon of Ad Vinum in Gard. We first met Seb back in 2017 when a 2-hour tasting at his cellar turned into a 3-night stay at his house!
In 2016, after working as the head sommelier of Le Chateaubriand in Paris for seven years, Sébastien Chatillon moved to Vallabrix in the Gard to start Ad Vinum.
Originally from Normandy, Sébastien went to university for about 4 months before deciding it was dull and not for him. Questioning his life path, he tried out many jobs. He sold candy, worked in stables, led rock bands… What would bring him true fulfillment?
Sébastien often ended a night of partying at his friend’s dad’s wine cave, drinking until the early morning hours. It occurred to him that he liked wine. He figured if he was going to drink the beverage until dawn, then maybe he should learn how to make it. He moved to the Loire Valley and worked with René Mosse in Anjou for four years. René opened his world to natural wine. “It was fresh, different, and in the morning I had no headache. A dream for a guy like me.”
Sébastien’s next move was to Paris for a girl. René set him up with Iñaki Aizpitarte, the chef of Le Chateaubriand. At the young age of 25, he became the sommelier of a restaurant that in 2010 was ranked no. 11 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list. Chateaubriand enabled him to dive deep into natural wine. There was absolutely no turning back.
In addition to starting Ad Vinum, Sébastien Chatillon owns Le Cave. Le Cave is a tiny wine shop sandwiched between Le Dauphin and Le Chateaubriand that sells natural wine from more than 15 countries.
Arlo x Frukstereo Halloween party!
Sunday Oct 30 we are super excited to host our dear friends, all the way from Sweden, Karl & Mikael of Frukstereo! We will be in house pouring their amazing ciders and fruit-nats as well as handing out best costume prizes, from 5:30PM to LATE! A little about Frukstereo below.
“Hej! After working as runners, dishwashers, waiters, managers and sommeliers we decided to challenge the way we perceive wine and cider in our Nordic region. Inspired by forward thinking friends, cider and natural wine producers, we went foraging for apples, pears, grapes and basically everything we could ferment into something drinkable (in the beginning with varying degrees of success). In 2016, we started out with a small 3000 bottle production at Hällåkra vineyard, and today we produce over 80,000 bottles a year in central Malmö. With Fruktstereo we want to create natural alcoholic beverages without additives, using Swedish produce sustainably grown without pesticides. We only use the indigenous yeast in the fruit and we will never manipulate our products in any way we don't view as natural. We are Karl Sjöström and Mikael Nypelius and our lovely crew in Malmö, Sweden.”