Substrata Wines Norwich

🌞 We’re making the most of the sunshine 🌞

🍀If you can’t make tonight’s al fresco tasting, we’re outdoors again tomorrow (Sunday 21st) from 11am until 3pm, for their Arts in the Garden day. 

Featuring live sets from and from the Punch House Band, and paintings, prints and crafts from Norwich-based artists – there’s even a chance to write a haiku with Norwich-based published poet

☕️ will be cycling into action for the teetotallers amongst you – and we’ll be serving wines by the glass to our fellow Bacchants 🍇

What a convivial way to spend a Sunday afternoon in the Fine City – and admission is free‼️

🌱If you’re based in, or visiting, Norwich, and haven’t been to the Grapes Hill Garden, take the opportunity to discover this genuinely grass-roots project, which took an unloved patch of Council-owned tarmac and made it into a thriving organic garden.

🍓The Grapes Hill Garden Community Group support local people in a concreted part of the city to grow and access healthy organic food 🥒

🌞The sunshine has finally broken through🌞

Just in time for our weekend of outdoor events!

🪴Join us in the Greenhouse Courtyard, a short walk from for ‘Orange is the New/Old White’, our tasting of 6 distinctive,
aromatic and unfiltered

Ticket price includes nibbles to complement the wines, and plenty of bread and organic olive oil.

📍Saturday July 20
🕰️ 5.30pm
💷£30

Orange wine might be trendy. But it isn’t new.

🟠Before modern wine presses gave us the ability to separate grape juice from grape skins, all wine made from white grapes had a deeper, orange-y colour, tangible tannin and a richer mouthfeel.

It wasn’t called because all ‘white’ wine was orange.

🔸In case you’re arriving (fashionably) late to the party, orange wines are made by macerating white grape varieties, extracting colour and tannin from this period of skin contact. 

Over the past couple of years skin-contact-white or ‘orange’ wines have entered the mainstream, though many are frustratingly faint echoes of the kind of bold and uncompromising that made us fall in 🧡with the genre.

🌱It’s up to we outlying to reclaim the category, so join us in the Greenhouse courtyard to sample six orange wines to get you talking, and thinking, about what you’re drinking.

(Don’t worry, there’s shelter in case of 🌧️)

📍The Greenhouse, 42-46 Bethel St, Norwich NR2 1NR

🗓️Saturday July 20

🕰️5.30pm

💷£30

❗️Pre booking essential - link in bio👆❗️

We had a grand old time on Bridewell Alley last week, tasting .wines in the company of the man himself.

‼️We’re back there TOMORROW (July 4th), running our monthly pop up bar. This time we’ll be pouring a selection of chilled reds from some more top growers – and

Admission is free – there’s no need to book, and no need to cook, as Bread Source will be offering their generous plates of charcuterie, 🧀 and sourdough. Just pay for what you eat and drink.

We start pouring at 5pm, and stop at 9.

🗳️We’d suggest voting before you start on the wine, in case you settle in and get comfortable…

📸 more excellent work from Rosie of

Fine City though is, it doesn’t often play host to dynamic young so we’re delighted to be hosting Ato, son of Massimiliana Spinola, owner and operator of .di.tassarolo in Piemonte.

🇮🇹The Spinolas are one of Italy’s grand families; their origins can be dated back to the year 900. They have owned the Castello since the 1300s, and they have been making wine on the site since 1367.

🥀But by the turn of the 21st century, the soils that had produced grapes for so long were badly depleted by chemical sprays. When Massimiliana inherited the estate in 2007, she was shocked by the absence of microbial life in the soil.

🌱She decided to convert the vineyards to biodynamics, to replenish the earth and to make the estate verdant once more.🌱

After years of helping his Mum at vintage, Ato has now bottled four of his own creations - .wines

The trio pictured above show Cortese di Gavi three ways – one sparkling, one still and one macerated/orange. All three are fermented naturally, using the yeasts from the grape skins, and are bottled and without the addition of sulphites. 

🍇We’ll also get to taste his first red, made from 100% Barbera grapes – and just for fun, we’ll taste it alongside a Barbera made by his Mum...

As an added bonus, we’ve invited Kim Hutchins, founder and operator of Italy Food Shop in Aylsham, and loyal supporter of Massimiliana’s wines.

🫒Kim has imported a range of high quality Italian foodstuffs, including three organic olive oils – one from Tuscany, one from Sicily and one from Sardinia. He’ll bring all three for us to taste on the evening.

Bread Source’s generous plates of 🧀and of charcuterie are available by pre-order only, priced at £15 each. Both are served with sourdough bread.

Please let us know when booking if you would like to pre-order food.

(Please pay Bread Source on the night for the food.)

📍Bread Source, 20 Bridewell Alley, Norwich NR2 1AQ
Tuesday 25th June, 6.30-8.30pm
💷£20
☝️book through link in bio☝️

Sorry folks…

have taken the sensible decision to cancel Sunday’s event.

After all this rain, Chapelfield Gardens was pretty muddy by the end, and there’s more rain predicted tonight.

Sorry to all those who booked for Sunday.

(Wish we could send some of this rain to – …)

❓Not bought your ticket for festival yet❓

Then book for Sunday, and add on our session in the tasting tent on

Over the past year, we’ve seen a surge of interest in this core natural wine style. In 2019, people asked us ‘what’s an orange wine?’ In 2024, the question has become ‘what orange wines do you have?’

In case you’re arriving (fashionably) late to the party, orange wines are made by macerating white grape varieties, extracting colour and tannin from this period of skin contact.

No 🍊s are involved in the making of these beverages, but the resulting wines are often orange or amber in hue, hence the name.

🤔Is the Fine City of ready for bold and distinctive examples of the genre?

We’ll see when we pour three orange wines from .andre maker of from indigenous grape varieties in Portugal.

If you’re new to Fernão Pires, and chestnut barrels, then embark on a journey of discovery with us on Sunday afternoon…

☝️Book through link in bio☝️

Wine is bottled sunshine, and it seems that this Summer we need to call on our reserves.🌦️

🌞We’ll be pouring soupçons of Summers past in all weekend, Festival, in Chapelfield Gardens.

We’re joining five other East Anglian wine merchants, four street food vendors, and five local wine producers. You can find us between and

🍇The on-site bar will be pouring wines from the exhibitors, including two supplied by us – ‘Jauzimen’ rosé from and ‘Gatafunho’ orange wine from Gardunha Sul.

For £15, you can meet the makers and merchants, and taste up to ten wines of your choosing; and for an extra £10 you can book on to one of the tutored sessions in the tasting tent.

📍On Sunday, Tom will be taking the stage to lead a tasting of three (other) orange wines from , a small independent producer of in Beira Baixa, Portugal.

☝️Read more and book through link in bio ☝️

It’s our favourite time of the month…

🥂Pop up bar on

Usual (absence of rules) apply – there’s no charge to get in and no need to book; come along any time between 5 and 9pm, and stay as long as you like.

Just pay for what you drink – and for what you eat, as Bread Source will have their generous plates of 🧀 charcuterie and sourdough available.

This month we’re telling a tale of four Grenache – two from in the Barossa 🇦🇺and two from in the Languedoc 🇫🇷

In both regions, Grenache can be overshadowed by Shiraz/Syrah, a variety which dominates in South Australia, and which was widely planted in the South of France in the 1990s as an ‘improving variety’.

But over the past decade we have seen more single varietal Grenache; we can’t get enough of them, and we’ll be pouring four this week.

🍇Grenache is a generous grape, ripening readily and giving a wine body and weight. When grown at low yields, it has a distinct varietal character – soft and rounded, with plenty of berry fruit, it can be quick to mature, developing meaty flavours in the bottle – which you can already taste in the Hayes wines, both from the great vintage of 2021.

You may not know that not all Grenache is red…. The Grenache Noir grape has Grenache Blanc and Grenache Gris cousins, both good candidates for making skin-contact-white or orange wines – which is exactly what Lauzeta did for their new cuvée, ‘Sabeza’.

🍑With its stone fruit aromatics, juicy mid palate and long, dry finish, this small batch wine has flown off the shelves, so come along and have a taste before it all disappears.

📍Bread Source, Bridewell Alley
Thursday June 6
🕰️ 5-9pm

❗️Time to book your place ❗️

Join us this Thursday evening to look at things in bloom – and to taste six wines from small independent producers.

After all the 🌧️ and ☀️ this Spring has brought, the Grapes Hill garden is looking spectacular 🌱🌼🍀and makes a fittingly biodiverse environment in which to enjoy six wines from our portfolio of direct imports.

We’ll be reuniting with Hannah Bingley of who has devised a menu of intricate canapés to complement the wines.

The temperatures are looking good for an outdoor tasting, and the Garden has gazebos that will keep us dry in case of rain.

10% of all bottle sales go to the Community Garden, so those of you based in can support one local charity and two local businesses at the same event.

📍THIS Thursday 30th May
Grapes Hill Community Garden, Norwich NR2 4HH
🕰️5.30 - 7.30 appx
£35

👆Book through link in bio 👆

Cheer up!

🌧️So it may be cloudy and drizzly today…

☀️But sunshine and clear skies are forecast for Sunday, when Ben will be offering wines by the glass to the good people of who have the good sense to come to

This grass roots project is open every day to the public, and admission is always free.

🍀The annual ‘Nature in the Garden’ event is a particularly fine day to visit the venue, and this family friendly occasion is a favourite date in our calendar.

🌼Pop by between 11 and 3 to enjoy this in bloom. There will be live music and a variety of stalls, including the Coffee Pedlar and of course, some rather good wine – with 10% of the sales going to the Garden.

Roll on Sunday!

‼️A new offering for our in-person customers at our stall…

Locally sourced culinary herbs, grown in accordance with and principles.

🌱The first time we encountered biodynamic growing wasn’t in the vineyards of the Wachau, but much closer to home, at a smallholding in Kirstead, near Brooke, in

There, back in 2008, we met Dave Wrenn, founder and operator of where he grows food for his table and culinary herbs to sell.

🐝It was a window into a world of verdant possibility; the smallholding is full of colours, aromas and buzzing pollinators, especially at this time of year, when the 🍎trees are in bloom 🌸

Now that we have some ☀️and warmth and plenty of moisture in the ground, it’s the perfect time of year to plant out some herbs, so pop by the stall and pick up some rosemary, sage, thyme, oregano, parsley or coriander🪴

You can also meet the great man himself this Sunday 12th May at the Bungay Street Market, from 9-4.

Well that sold quickly…

On Friday night we told our mailing list about Lauzété: Summertime Gastronomy – our wine dinner with The Steam Packet, as part of

❗️now we’ve only got two places left… link in bio…

Ever since last November’s sell-out Portuguese wine dinner, we’ve been eager to work with the progressive souls over on Crown Road again. On Tuesday June 18th we’re collaborating to offer Norwich a flavour of Summer in the South of France.

🦪🐌🍒Jacob and Henry have devised a suitably regional menu to complement the award-winning and dry-farmed wines of Domaine La Lauzeta, in the region of the Languedoc.

The upstairs restaurant .steampacket is a touch redolent of a French bistro, with its wooden interior and open kitchen. We’ll be seating everyone at one long table to foster a convivial atmosphere.

‼️If you want to be the first to know about future events and new wines, sign up to our mailing list – link is also in bio 👆

And if you’re too late to get tickets, DM us to go on the waiting list.

(Credit to Florian from for the titular pun)

If you don’t know of the Grapes Hill Community Garden, it’s a magical urban oasis in the Fine City of

❗️It’s open every day to the public from 9am, and there’s no admission charge ❗️

🌱 It’s now over 14 years since took this patch of patch of unloved Council-owned tarmac and created a colourful community-owned garden, with raised beds for local residents, places to sit and relax, and wildflower areas to encourage pollinators. 🐝

The garden was planted and is maintained organically; there are several 🍇 vines and other fruit trees and bushes, and visitors are welcome to take a small amount of fruit or herbs.

With a name like Grapes Hill, the venue is crying out for wine, so that’s where we’re holding our next ticketed tasting.

🌤️After this decidedly undecided spell of weather, we’ve selected six wines with substance to suit a particularly late Spring time event.

We’re delighted to be reunited with Hannah Bingley of who is making her wonderfully intricate seasonal canapés to complement the wines.

📍Thursday May 30, 5.30pm

👆Read more and book through the link in bio👆

🌤️It’s finally warming up this week, in time for us to unveil three new Portuguese whites from our latest shipment.

We’ll be on Bridewell Alley this Thursday (May 2nd), pouring wines from a new addition to the Substrata portfolio – 

🐑 With a little help from her flock of 200 sheep, Elisa Freire Lobo farms 12 hectares of vines on a granite soil base in the Dão, central Portugal. She makes a range of powerfully mineral wines from indigenous grape varieties.

She ferments using wild yeasts and adding only a minimum of sulphites. We’ll be pouring two elegant still whites – one made from 100% Encruzado, one of Portugal’s most esteemed grapes, and the other a traditional field blend of six different varieties. We’ll also be pouring her fizzy, and gloriously cloudy, ‘Sardanita’ pet Nat🥂

We’ll finish the flight with a red from Beira Baixa, Portugal, home of .andre 🍷

Usual absence of rules apply – pop by any time and stay for as long (or as little) as you like. There’s no need to book, and no need to cook, either, provided you like sourdough, 🧀 and charcuterie.

❗️First pour is at 5pm, and the last at 9 ❗️

What fun we had festival last year, merrily dispensing tasters in the ☀️and introducing people of the Fine City to our range of

Such fun that we’re doing it again – 🔔Norwich Wine Week is back 🔔

It’s bigger and set to be even better, so we’ve reserved a pitch for the festival at Chapelfield Gardens on 14, 15 and 16 June.

🍇We’re sharing the stage with popular local producers and and other small independents like

‼️If you book for the afternoon of Sunday 16, you can add on a place for the Substrata session in the tasting tent, where we’ll introduce three of ‘our’ 

👆Link in bio to book 👆

📣Introducing… the Springtime Six📣

Though wine is a drink for all seasons, some wines seem especially suited to Spring.🌱

We’ve curated, and discounted, a case of six bottles that speak to us of the season.

🌤️We’ve chosen some vibrant and fresh styles well suited to warm and sunny days; and some more succulent beverages to enjoy on the still-chilly evenings🌥️

You’ll find some of our favourite producers and some classic genres in here – and a light and juicy red.

👆Read more and buy online through the link in our bio

Or buy from a real person IRL on our stall

We’re on Bridewell Alley this Thursday, pouring four brand new cuvées from Domaine La Lauzeta – including their first

❓Who will be the first person in the UK to try them?

It’s an informal pop up bar scenario – no cover charge, no need to book, and no need to cook, as Bread Source will be offering plates of charcuterie 🧀 and

Pop by any time between 5 and 9 and stay for as long as you like – just pay for what you eat and drink.

🗓️Thursday April 4

⏰5-9pm

📍Bread Source, Norwich

📸 Rosie Mills-Smith

📣Menu drop!📣

Great work from the team who have devised these flavoursome light bites to complement the wines at Thursday evening’s tasting.

🍀Join us after work to taste six organic, and wines from small independent producers, all imported by us into the UK.

We’ll tell the stories behind the bottles and explore how different 🍇varieties can complement and enrich each other.

Don’t worry if you’re new to wine tasting; we’ll offer a quick introduction at the start to these accessible, distinctive and flavoursome wines, and spend about two hours tasting them as a group.

Wine, food, a stylish venue and a little learning for £30 a head makes for a great value event.

📍Link in bio to book online; or if you’re in you can book in person at our Norwichmarket stall or at Wright’s.

📣The first Thursday of the month means time for our regular pop up bar at on Bridewell Alley,

🍇Meanwhile, it’s harvest time for our friends in Australia’s Valley, so we’ll be raising a glass (of years passed) to the three small independent producers whose wines we imported into the UK: Smallfry, Izway and

We’ll be shining a light on single varietal wines 🔦made from grapes that often get overshadowed in blends – Cinsault, Mataro, (known as Mourvèdre in France and Monastrell in Spain), and...

We’re enthusiasts of wines and this is the smallest we’ve found so far, produced by Brett Hayes from the fruit of a very particular row of vines.

‼️Only 260 bottles were made in 2021, and only 24 found their way to these shores.

As ever, Bread Source will be offering plates of sourdough, 🧀 and charcuterie.

There’s no need to book, and no charge to get in – just pay for what you eat and drink. First pour at 5pm, last pour at 9.

(Pretty impressive 🍅 harvest from this year, too…)

If you heard a howl of frustrated rage emanating from the East of England last night, fear not, it wasn’t the fabled – it was just Tom.

will understand the joy of drinking wine from an – and the pain of breaking the oh-so delicate stems.

Ah well – not long till Christmas…

Will we find the perfect blend?

Our first ticketed wine tasting of the year explores how grape varieties can complement and enrich each other.

🍀We’ll discuss the important role that mixed planted vineyards have to play in making wine more resilient in our changing climate.

This time we’re being hosted by Wright’s, who moved into London Street at the end of last year. Perhaps more a comrade than a neighbour, Adam Wright started out on a market stall before opening his first café in Bury St Edmunds.

The site is his third, and together with his young and creative team, he’s putting on a series of evening events to augment his burgeoning daytime trade.

🍇On March 14th we’ll tell the stories behind six of our organic, and

📣We’ve imported these wines direct, and they are exclusive to Substrata in the UK. 📣

Tickets are £30, and you can book your place through the link in our bio, or in person or at our stall.

One for the good people of

An exciting happening in NR2… the emergence of the York, which re-opened last May.

The new management of Joe and Wendy has brought quite the transformation, with home cooked seasonal food, locally brewed cask ales and (a rare thing in this Fine City) a wine list with plenty of options

Now you can enjoy a taste of the with your brisket beef empanada or your Sunday lunch, as we’ve supplied the York with the ‘Corteza’ rouge and rosé from Domaine La Lauzeta.

And as if good food and drink wasn’t enough, there’s plenty of other activities to enjoy at The York – a Thursday night quiz, a roaring fire on chilly evenings, and come the summer an enormous garden with raised beds and a pétanque pitch – a nod to when said garden was a bowling green.

Pay a visit– it’s open Wednesday to Sunday

We probably should be posting about romance or rosé, or offering reminders about February 14th.

But other wine merchants will have that covered, so instead let’s share about someone who’s been inspiring us – Adam Huss, founder of

🌱For anyone interested in going beyond organic wine, there’s a wealth of information about farming, agriculture and

There’s a barely believable depth of content, a generous curiosity and a lot of heart and soul in these podcasts.

⛈️With the annual nature of their crop, and without the protection of polytunnels or glasshouses, viticulturists really are at the agricultural sharp end of

On this podcast you’ll listen to people keen to show how soils can be saved and wine preserved for future generations amidst increasingly uncertain and volatile weather patterns.

🍀There’s plenty of talk of and (purists cover your ears) grape varieties in here. Recent episodes include a deep dive into – after all, it’s exactly 100 years since Rudolph Steiner delivered his lectures describing ‘A Spiritual Basis for the Renewal of Agriculture’.

It’s compelling stuff – You’ll find yourself praying for traffic or volunteering to do the washing up, just so you can listen to an entire episode in (relative) peace and quiet.

📣Thursday February 1st📣

Farewell to

We resume our monthly pop up bar on Bridewell Alley, Norwich.

🌅Let’s visit warmer climes in our imaginations, as we pour a rosé and three reds from the

Join us for a flavour of the and a glass or two of Minervois from and Saint-Chinian from

First pour is at 5pm, and the last at 9.

🧀There’s no need to book, and no need to cook, as Bread Source will have plates of cheese, charcuterie and on offer.

Swing by for a quick glass or settle in for a few, as the wines on offer will make an enjoyable

Dry January isn’t for us, but even we Substratians need the occasional night off of the vino.

🌵On dry nights, the driest point is 6 pm – the hour of the aperitif. That’s the time when we most long for something delicious and uplifting to unwind with after the day’s travails.

🥂That’s when we reach for a glass of – and we’re lucky enough to have a few bottles of their special edition brew,

As you might expect given our penchant for all things Go Kombucha is made from just four ingredients – spring water, sugar, single varietal tea and a kombucha culture, or a Scoby.

This Symbiotic Community Of Bacteria and Yeast ferments the sugar and tea to give you a drink with the complex flavours of fermentation – an appropriate alternative to wine.

🍏🌸There’s no filtration (you can see a fragment of the scoby in suspension if you look carefully) and no post-fermentation infusions or sweeteners, so the delicate flavour of the tea shines through. This one is made from a white pai mu tan tea, with gentle floral aromas of apple blossom.

Komsecco is sealed with a cork and has a gentle but persistent fizz, which feels celebratory; so this weekend you can raise a glass to the end of !! 🍾

Come and grab a bottle from our stall.

Time, like an ever rolling stream, bears all its sons away.

🌊And concomitantly, washes some of them ashore…

We’ve been selling wines from .di.tassarolo since 2012, when internet searches for Substrata were only undertaken by geologists.

🌱Back then, Massimiliana Spinola was the new generation at the estate, the agitating force at a family vineyard that dates back to the 14th century (the North Americans amongst you read that right).

🤦‍♂️Imagine how old we feel, then, to receive wines made by her son, Ato, an intimidatingly capable Zoomer.

🍐It’s quite a debut – a natural Gavi, with an arrestingly aromatic top note of beeswax, which softens into more delicate bouquet of pear, grapefruit and almond.

And an orange wine, also made from Cortese di Gavi, with refined aromas of lemon pith, dried apricot, root ginger and mandarin orange.🍋

Both wines are dry, bold, uncompromising, with a distinct salinity and a clean and resolved finish, which readies you for the next sip.

Ato’s intention is to rub the polish off of Gavi, and to create something breathing, rough, real.

❄️These are both wines hearty enough to warm a freezing evening in January, and to invite (at least amongst we Substratians) casual conversation about the passing of time, which led to the perusal of a few old family photos.

🫣So enjoy the printed photo from 1999, when Tom was working the lookalike circuit (John Power, of course) and Ben was gigging in a Stone Roses tribute band.

Our Dad looks a bit unimpressed by these career paths… incidentally, he was only two years older than Ben is now…

’salright .wines

Après la déluge…

… le website (Rodney).

Now that the chaos of Christmas is behind us, we’re finally catching up on the computer work.

All our retail wines now available on our website, including this flip show of lovely things imported by – link in bio if you fancy a browse.

But no sooner have we caught up than new wines arrive tomorrow, when we receive our first delivery of 2024 to our stall…

… our drop will include two English Pinot Noirs from and natural Piemontese offerings from .wines

First glimpse on tomorrow’s story…

Wishing you all a very happy festive season.

We made it to Calgary, Alberta, where the ground is white and the sky is blue, to spend the holiday season with family-in-law.

Wherever and however you spend the time, we wish you an enjoyable and restorative few days.

Thanks to all our customers for your interest, enthusiasm and support. Between us we keep the door open to from

We look forward to talking wine with you again in 2024.