Viticulture: The Chardonnay vines are close-planted and the canopies managed to ensure the ripening fruit remains in ‘dappled light’ throughout the heat of the day. This keeps the fruit cool, to preserve delicate floral aromas and also avoids harsh phenolic characters that can otherwise develop in sun-exposed fruit. The vines are cane-pruned (by hand of course) and hand-picked at approximately 12.5° Beaumé. Chardonnay is our earliest ripening variety, generally picked in the first week of March. We crop it at about 1 tonne per acre to achieve flavour intensity and ‘drive’ in the finished wine

Winemaking: We use the simplest of traditional techniques for making our Chardonnay. The fruit is hand picked, then whole-bunch pressed to extract only 550 litres of juice per tonne of fruit. The juice is partially settled (to remove some of the solid grape fragments that have come through from the press) then transferred to barrel where it is spontaneously or ‘wild’ fermented. We use very low toast, water-bent Saury hogsheads (300L) for fermentation and maturation to ensure that the oak component is present but never dominates. The wine is kept in barrel on lees for only 6 months, so as to retain freshness and vibrancy; it rewards cellaring with increased complexity and depth of flavour.

Tasting Note:
An intense, tightly woven wine that leans toward the Chablis style. The palate shows minerally grapefruit, white nectarine and hints of honeysuckle, underpinned by subtle barrel-ferment characters. It is a distinctive wine that combines European palate structure with restrained, cool climate fruit expression.

Only 100 cases of this wine were produced.