Originally from Germany, Hannah Fuellenkemper spent part of her childhood in the US before moving to the UK. After relocating to Amsterdam for a masters in law (and completing it), she realised she was pursuing the wrong thing. Hannah discovered natural wine through food and writing, and a first, unforgettable bottle of Ploussard. Later that year on a trip to Jura, Hannah knocked on the door of Bruyère-Houillon who had made the wine and stumbled into her first experience of a tasting, leaving with 6 bottles and a thirst for more knowledge. Having decided against law as a career, Hannah found this world of natural wine spoke to her. She tasted wine, wrote about it (on her blog and Simon Woolf’s ‘The Morning Claret’), sought out natural wine spots in Amsterdam and worked at the city’s popular Bar Centraal, but found she didn’t get on with service or with memorising reams of technical information. Increasingly, Hannah visited winemakers across France, happiest around a kitchen table with good company and unmarked bottles. Her first harvest was in ’16 with Baptiste Cousin, where she discovered the intense combination of very hard work, a lot of play and unbounded generosity. Over the following years Hannah moved a lot, a harvest in Italy followed by work in cellars and vineyards across the Loire, Ardeche and Banyuls. Now in Auvergne, she has, for the first time, her own cellar, some sense of stability and, as of ’23, her own pump. Although she started making wine in ’19, it’s this location that saw the birth of Abracadabra.
All the wines are négoce, zero-zero and hand labelled, although Hannah is keen to change this given the incredibly time-consuming nature of her painted labelling. Most are made in fibreglass tanks, although dEAd cAt sTRat(egy) ’22 is an exception with one barrel mixed back in. The grapes were picked in mid-August and bottled in July ’23; the Xarel·lo de-stemmed and macerated for 7 days with Macabeu from clay soils in the Penedès. Orange peel, a touch of bitter herbs and a good grip. Drink chilled.