FAMILY ESTATES: THE HUMAN SCALE OF WINE

The global wine industry has consolidated dramatically over the past half century. According to an industry research firm, Mordor Intelligence, cost pressures are accelerating industry consolidation to the extent that smaller estates, and especially family estates, either exit the market or sell to larger, better-capitalized entities ("Wine Market Size, Share & Industry Trends Report, 2031”). Large beverage conglomerates now own many of the labels you see on restaurant wine lists and supermarket shelves. Wines made by corporate entities are often technically competent in that they are consistent and predictable, but what they rarely are is interesting. Per the famous playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw: “Consistency is the enemy of enterprise, just as symmetry is the enemy of art.”

At Amaro Spirits & Wine, we have always prioritized family estate producers. This is not sentimentality so much as a conviction that the most interesting wine in the world tends to come from people who have a genuine stake in what they're making. Let’s be clear, though, that small does not always mean family-owned, and family-owned does not always mean small. Some of the most thoughtful producers in the world operate through cooperative structures, particularly in Italy, where well-run cooperatives have allowed small growers to pool resources without sacrificing the integrity of their fruit or their farming practices. Instead, what matters most, in our view, is not the legal structure but the human scale, that somewhere in the chain, people with soil under their fingernails and their names on the label are making decisions based on something other than volume targets and quarterly earnings.

The three wines in this month's club come from three different family estates in three different countries, but they share something essential. Each is doing something that a corporate producer would be unlikely, and in many instances unwilling, to do, not because the corporate producer lacks the technical means, but because it lacks the freedom: Freedom to experiment; freedom to hand the reins to a daughter when tradition would have dictated otherwise; freedom to build something ungoverned by the logic of the market. These are wines that exist because families, over generations, have earned the right to pivot quickly and make exactly what they want.

LAGAR DE COSTA: WHEN YOU OWN THE VINES, YOU CAN BREAK THE RULES

The Lagar de Costa story begins in the early twentieth century, when the family planted its first Albariño vines in the parish of Castrelo, in the heart of Galicia's Rías Baixas, on the Atlantic coast of northwestern Spain. The location is unique in that the estate sits at about sea level, within two hundred meters of the Ría de Arousa, the largest saline estuary in Galicia, with the Atlantic Ocean just ten kilometers away. For a hundred years, the family has farmed these vines, some over fifty years old, on granite and sandy loam that drains quickly and is saturated with the salinity of the coastal air. Today, the third generation is at the helm, with siblings Sonia and Manuel leading the estate and both committed to pushing the winery in new directions.

Lagar de Costa's flagship wines are precisely what you would expect from a serious Rías Baixas producer: classic Albariño, bright and mineral and saline, shaped by a cool Atlantic climate and soils that impart the kind of stony freshness this grape is famous for. But the Naranjo is something else entirely; it is a side project that the siblings are employing to expand their winemaking skills and product breadth. It is the estate's only skin-contact (aka orange) wine and only 2,600 bottles were released this year. A large producer would be unlikely to take this kind of risk with Albariño as it is Spain's most commercially recognizable white grape with a large domestic and international market. There is no market pressure to do so, and considerable market pressure not to. But Sonia and Manuel are not making wine for a market. They are making wine because they are curious about what their vines can do.

The siblings Sonia and Manuel

Lagar de Costa is close to the ocean.

Featured May Amaro Wine Club Family Estate wine: Lagar de Costa Rías Baixas Naranjo (2024)
VARIETALS: Albariño

The grapes are harvested by hand from the estate’s oldest vines, planted in 1977. After harvest, the juice spends 15 to 20 days in contact with the skins in stainless steel tanks where it ferments spontaneously with native wild yeasts. The extended skin maceration extracts color, tannin, and texture from the grape skins, transforming what would otherwise be a crisp, delicate white wine into something more structured and complex. The wine is aged on its lees for three months before bottling, adding further weight and roundness. The result is a wine that retains the saline minerality and Atlantic freshness that define Rías Baixas, while layering in the grip and amber depth of skin contact. Expect apricot, dried citrus peel, stone fruit, white tea, and a long, briny finish.

FOOD PAIRINGS: grilled octopus, salt cod, aged Manchego, charcuterie, roasted peppers, miso-glazed fish, hard-shell seafood dishes

CLOTILDE LEGRAND: SEVEN GENERATIONS OF MEN, AND THEN A DAUGHTER

The Legrand family has been growing grapes in Saumur since the seventeenth century, making them among the earliest recorded producers in what would eventually become the Saumur-Champigny appellation in the Loire Valley region of France. Their cellars, carved into the limestone tufa beneath the village of Varrains, date to the fifteenth century, made from the same pale stone that defines the region's soils and gives its wines their signature chalky mineral backbone. For roughly three hundred and fifty years, the estate passed from father to son. In 2014, for the first time in its history, it did not. Clotilde, daughter of René-Noël, became not only the first woman to lead the Legrand domaine, but also the domaine's first female winemaker, among the seventh generation of the Legrand family.

Clotilde does not consider herself a disruptor by nature, but she is certainly not averse to prioritizing her own instinct over market trends. She describes her approach as deeply traditional in that she wishes to keep the domaine committed to honoring the character of each vintage rather than imposing a house style, but she is does not care if letting the vintages speak for themselves means sacrificing product consistency in terms of taste. Her father René-Noël was himself also an innovator within the bounds of tradition: in 1991, he was the first grower in Varrains to plant an active cover crop between vineyard rows, a then-unconventional practice that encouraged soil health and reduced yields in favor of quality. Clotilde has continued this approach, farming organically across seventeen hectares of Cabernet Franc divided among twenty separate plots, with vines averaging forty-five years of age.

The domaine is principally a red wine estate; Saumur-Champigny is Cabernet Franc country. But on a small separate plot, Clotilde cutlivates Chenin Blanc vines to make the domaine’s only white wine. L'Écart is its name, and it is the wine in your box this month. In French, l'écart means the deviation, the divergence, the step to one side. Again, Clotilde is not afraid to step out of a march.

Domaine Legrand dates back to the 17th century.

Clotilde Legrand inspecting vines.

Featured May Amaro Wine Club Family Estate wine: Clotilde Legrand Vigneronne Saumur Blanc L'Écart (2021)
VARIETALS: Chenin Blanc

L'Écart, the only white wine Legrand produces, is sourced from the single small plot of organically farmed Chenin Blanc on the limestone and chalk slopes of Saumur. The grapes are harvested by hand in two passes to carefully select all of the fruit at its optimal ripeness. After pressing, the wine is fermented in an oval tank (cuve ovoïde) and aged on its fine lees in used oak barrels, the former preserving the variety's natural acidity and citrus aromatics, and the latter lending a subtle creaminess and hints of beeswax on a long, chalky finish.

FOOD PAIRINGS: roasted chicken, veal with cream sauce, goat cheese, asparagus, pan-seared scallops, mushroom tarts, aged Comté

MEINKLANG: THE FARM THAT GROWS BECAUSE THE FAMILY DOES

Meinklang sits on the eastern edge of Austria, in Burgenland, where the flat Hungarian plain meets Lake Neusiedl, a UNESCO World Heritage landscape of reeds and extraordinary biological diversity. The farm is vast by the standards of serious natural wine producers: nearly two thousand hectares of vineyards, ancient grain fields, orchards, vegetable gardens, wild meadows, and a substantial livestock operation including Mangalitsa pigs, cattle, horses, sheep, and chickens. It is, in the most literal sense, a closed-loop farm, where animals fertilize fields that grow grain that feeds animals, and where the health of the vineyard is inseparable from the health of everything around it. Meinklang is Demeter-certified biodynamic, which as we have discussed in a previous Wine Club (https://amarobrooklyn.com/pages/biodynamic_farming_and_winemaking), is the most rigorous certification in biodynamic/organic agriculture. Meinklang takes biodynamics so seriously that it has become a place where Austrian farmers come to learn what it looks like and techniques.

What makes Meinklang's story particularly resonant for this month's theme is the reason the farm grew to its current scale in the first place. The Michlits family expanded its operations not to chase market share, but because all three sons wanted to stay. Hannes manages the fields, Lukas oversees the animals, and Werner makes the wine. The farm grew to accommodate a family that refused to be dispersed. This is almost the inverse of how agricultural consolidation usually works, where scale absorbs and erases individual stakes. At Meinklang, scale is a byproduct of belonging. The Nacht series, which is a rotating premium release, each edition a new experiment in grape variety and technique, reflects this same logic. Werner is not optimizing for a consistent product. He is following his curiosity, edition by edition, with the freedom that comes from working within a family that has already decided what it is.

Lake_Neusiedl_UNESCO–World-Heritage_site.png

Meinklang is situated in a UNESCO World Heritage landscape.

The Michlits family chooses to expand together.

Featured May Amaro Wine Club Family Estate wine: Meinklang Österreich Nacht Edition 4 (NV)
VARIETALS: Cabernet Franc

The Nacht series is Meinklang's most experimental product line, and each edition is a one-time expression, meaning different grapes, different techniques, and no guarantee of repetition. Edition 4 is made from Cabernet Franc grown on the sandy soils of Burgenland's Neusiedlersee. After fermentation with native wild yeasts, the wine is aged in concrete eggs that Meinklang fabricates themselves, which allow gentle oxygen exchange (see our Wine Club https://amarobrooklyn.com/pages/oak-or-not-to-oak for more information on this type of aging) without imparting any wood flavor, preserving the purity and freshness of the fruit. The wine is bottled unfined and unfiltered with no added sulfites. The result is a Cabernet Franc that is light, bright, and almost effervescent, the kind of wine that has a better chance of being made by a family farm who answers to no one but itself.

FOOD PAIRINGS: roast chicken, duck, veal, charcuterie, grilled vegetables, lentil dishes, soft-ripened cheeses