Anders Frederik Steen and Anne Bruun Blauert make their thoughtful and highly original wines from “grapes and only grapes” as they put it.

Anders began making wine in 2013 when he first started purchasing fruit from winemakers he admired and then making wine alongside his friend, legendary Jura winemaker Jean-Marc Brignot. The couple and their young family have now settled in the beautiful village of Valvignères in the Ardèche. The many varieties grown here thrive on a perfect mix of clay and limestone and the vineyards are full of life, having been tended organically for decades now.

As well as their own vineyards, the two also harvest grapes with their friends Gérald and Jocelyne Oustric of La Mazel in Valvignères and further afield with the Bannwarth family in Obermorschwihr, Alsace.

In his previous life Anders was both a chef and sommelier, working at some of the best restaurants in his native Denmark (Copenhagen institutions, Relæ and Manfreds). This restaurant experience informs the couple’s winemaking methodology - just like working in a small kitchen with the latest seasons fresh produce, they do not seek to follow rules or conventions and do not feel the need to make the same wines each year. Instead, as they harvest, they taste the grapes and begin to imagine the kind of wine they might like to make. Layers of flavour and texture are brought about through slow presses, oxygen and the canny ability to blend in a way few others can achieve.

It is a refreshingly free, creative approach that yields thought-provoking and sometimes challenging wines that are truly one of a kind. A true testament to an ever creative and adaptive couple, willing to push winemaking to its outer edge.