WINEMAKING AS AN EXPRESSION OF THE REGION
We believe in gently nurturing the vines and the land for the long-term. That, together with a meticulous and uncompromising work in the vineyard and minimising interventions in the winery, enables us to create distinctive wines evocative of the remarkable beauty and character of this terroir.
Organic farming has been a prerequisite for us since the start in 2015, with formal certification achieved in 2018. But certification is not the goal, nor is it enough.
Our approach is to work with nature and its cycles to create the best soil structure we can, to reduce tilling, compaction and emissions, to mulch rather than to plough, to encourage and foster biodiversity. It means not using any synthetic chemical products, for example replacing insecticides with pheromones, and minimising the use of those products which are permitted, such as copper and sulphur, while still protecting and nurturing our vines. It means sharing the vineyard with a local shepherd in the winter so that her sheep can graze, while keeping on top of the grass and weeds and giving back nutrients to the soil. It means considering the long-term impact of each and every action we take in the vineyard.
Soil structure is absolutely paramount to the long-term well-being of the vineyard.
VITICULTURE
The work is painstaking and manual, involving pruning, debudding, shoot thinning, leaf removal and green harvesting to achieve perfect ripeness of the grapes. Weeds are mulched in the rows, where we also sow leguminous plants to add nitrogen and organic matter to the soil.
The grapes are harvested entirely selectively by hand, with thorough sorting in the vineyard to remove anything other than perfectly ripe and healthy grapes, collected into small containers to avoid any damage and then rapidly transported to the winery.
VINIFICATION
The grapes are loaded into stainless steel tanks, using single vineyard selections, so that each block is vinified in a separate tank to allow us to study their individual character.
We are pragmatic in our winemaking and each vintage, each grape variety and even each field might want to be treated differently. The overriding principle though is to let the fruit do the talking, so since the beginning we have worked with very low sulphite management and minimal intervention in the winery.
The objective is a slow, gentle extraction to give a pure and elegant expression of the terroir, with the fermentation led by indigenous yeast found in the vineyard and the winery.
