August 2026 Wine Club
A month for celebrating someone else’s news
I’ll be honest here, August doesn't hand you much to work with. It feels like a liminal space where the heat lingers, the leaves haven't turned (yet), and there's no holiday standing guard over the month telling you how to feel about it. What August does seem to have this year is everyone else's news, with a wedding here, a pregnancy announcement there, and maybe someone's kid heading off to college for the first time. It feels like a month spent toasting other people's milestones while you wait for what’s next.
So instead of forcing a theme or a throughline onto a month that doesn't want one, we leaned into wines that refuse to pick a lane themselves. This round comes almost entirely from Vineka, a winery in a small patch of Puglia on a mission to reawaken the local area’s untapped potential. And for Cork Dork, we added a Lambrusco rosé from Lini 910, a fourth-generation Lambrusco house that doesn't care what season it is because being alive is worth opening a bottle of bubbles.
1) ZITO VINEKA VERDECA, MARTINA FRANCA, PUGLIA
WINE: ORANGE // GRAPES: VERDECA // CLUB: VIN DE SOIF & CORK DORK
About the Producer: Guglielmo Zito founded Vineka in 2016 with a simple goal: prove that Puglia's Valle d'Itria could produce something worth the world's attention, using grapes that had been sitting in its own backyard the whole time. He farms sustainably, keeps his hand light in the cellar, and focuses on native varieties like Verdeca instead of chasing whatever's trendy. The winery’s vision blends the iconic with the historic to bring about something new.
About the Wine: This is the wine that earns August its "in-between" title. Made from Verdeca and left on its skins, it's not quite a white and not quite a red. It is trapped somewhere in the middle, and all the better for it. Left alone in stainless steel with barely any intervention, it comes out savory and mineral-driven, shaped by the karst soils of the Valle d'Itria. Just enough weight to make you forget you're drinking something technically "orange."
2) ZITO VINEKA NEGROAMARO, MARTINA FRANCA, PUGLIA
WINE: RED // GRAPES: NEGROAMARO // CLUB: VIN DE SOIF & CORK DORK
About the Wine: Same producer, same patch of clay-and-limestone soil, completely different mood. This one ferments on its own, no lab yeast, no shortcuts, then spends a year resting in a mix of stainless steel and tonneaux. This method provides just enough contact with wood to soften without covering up the fruit, a delicate dance. Negroamaro has a reputation for being underestimated, and this bottle makes the case for why that needs to change: dark forest fruit, plum, blackberry, with an earthiness and faint sea breeze minerality that makes you feel like you’re drinking the Italian vacation that never made it out of the group chat.
“Tradition is the flip side of modernity. By harking back to our own tradition, we hope to recapture something that might otherwise be lost or at risk of oblivion”
3) LINI 910 LABRUSCA ROSÉ N/V, EMILIA-ROMAGNA, ITALY
WINE: Lambrusco ROSÉ // GRAPES: SALAMINO & SORBARA // CLUB: CORK DORK ONLY
About the Producer: Lini 910 has been family-run since 1910, four generations deep now, and is largely responsible for convincing the wine world to take Lambrusco seriously. Winemaker Fabio Lini has spent his career proving that "sparkling red-adjacent wine from Emilia" can hold its own next to Champagne on a serious wine list. Fun fact: Labrusca is the ancient Roman name for the family of Lambrusco grape varieties, believed by many to be among the earliest grapes used to produce wine. So really, you’re drinking history here.
About the Wine: This is the bottle for whatever you're celebrating this month, even if "celebrating" just means it's Tuesday. Fabio Lini makes it the traditional Charmat way, a still wine gets its fizz from a second fermentation in pressurized tanks, then rests on its lees until it earns its complexity. This is the same slow patience that's kept this family in business for four generations. What shows up in the glass is bright red fruit and juicy minerality with a clean, dry finish that pairs with genuinely anything. Somms reach for it with oysters just as often as with BBQ, which means it will go with whatever you got planned.
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