Grown under a certified organic programme (BioGro #5124) on our Estate. This was the fourth vintage made entirely on the Estate.

A wet winter followed by a mild spring, and a warm summer and early autumn gave us an early budburst, great flowering and fruitset, and produced a perfect season for the early pick varieties with volumes well up on previous years. A weather-bomb in the weeks just before harvest ripped nets off and broke posts but we recovered in time to protect the ripening crop from birds.

Conditions were perfect for an early harvest and we brought all our fruit in before the dreaded rain arrived.

Hand harvested; 100% destemmed without crushing into open top fermenters, wild ferment helped along only by gentle hand plunging. This was followed by a long slow post-fermentation maceration. Maturation took place in a selection of quality tight-grained French oak barriques (mainly Allier and Tronçaise), none new, for 18 months.
Bottled unfined and unfiltered. Contains no additions and very low levels of sulphites. Bottled under screw cap in light-weight glass.