Whether you are a wine-lover, or not, natural wine is a whole new experience. Most of us only ever go through life tasting chemical wine: mass-produced red, white or sparkling wines that taste the same year after year, bottle to bottle and give you a nice hangover to boot.
Real wine is radically different, this is vibrant wine that is filled with exhilarating flavours and that’s better for you and the planet!
Our small farm was setup with the purpose of building and sharing ecology, beauty and abundance: we live in a coastal hill valley which is very dry, so we work with what is there already, we do not use irrigation and only grow crops that will be resilient in the face of changing climatic conditions. Our 100 year old vines have survived multiple fires, frosts and earthquakes. The vines are dry-farmed, amidst a wealth of biodiversity so they stay healthy. We never add any chemicals or fertilisers, constantly listening, learning and working with nature. We call it “beyond organic”.
So it seemed totally ludicrous to take the carefully crafted grapes and doctor them with sulphates to ensure they tasted very similar to every other bottle of wine you’ve ever drunk!
Hence the hours of research began and we came across the world of natural wine-making pioneered by some phenomenal winemakers and farmers in France and spread by the brilliant Isabelle Legeron.
Natural wines are diverse in flavour and colour: bright yellows, burnt orange, cherry red, blossom pink, golden, each year a slightly new flavour or hue depending on the sun and rain. And what’s more, no one can tell you how they are meant to taste.
Natural wine is a craft, not a science, where you work with the gifts of the land: organically-farmed grapes, fermented with local yeasts (already plentiful on the grape skins) and the microbiome of the fermentation process, fully alive from start to finish. And you get a much more exciting and unpredictable collection of wines as a result.
We invite you to taste with an open mind and heart and experience the journey of flavours as they swirl into your mouth.