Autumn 2019 Update
May 14, 2019
Harvest 2019 has blessed us with amazing fruit, and our little Urban Winery is full to the brim with amazing wines now. For all of March and April, we enjoyed settled warm dry weather conditions which brought the fruit on beautifully. The vineyards could not have looked better, so there is a great sense of excitement and anticipation in the air!
Our 2018 Chardonnays were racked from Eggs and barrels in late February, and are now safely in tank for finishing and stabilising. The quality of these wines is fantastic, with excellent purity and concentrated power. We are super excited about these wines and look forward to bringing them to the market in due course.
Following our theme of innovation, we have a spectacular ‘whole berry ferment’ wine to share with you. I have tried many ‘Orange’ wines that have been fermented on skins and left for long periods to age on skins, and to be honest, I usually find them excessively phenolic, bitter and often oxidative. So I have tried a very different approach! Handpicked Chardonnay was gentle de-stemmed through a specialist Socma destemmer, resulting in whole berries and no stems. We then foot crushed the berries before fermenting in an open top fermenter in a chilled barrel room. As soon as the ferment was dry, we transferred the young wine to a concrete egg for 11 months maturation. The result is spectacular!! Lifted aromas of orange rind, mandarin peel and floral notes lead to a richly textured well-structured pallet with no bitterness or astringency. Instead, exotic fruits, suave texture and beguiling aromas seduce. Truly unique and full of expression! Watch this space….
Recently we released our highest level of achievement with Chardonnay, the remarkable ‘ZEN’. This is a World First wine, being the inaugural wine ever made in a French Oak Egg. This is utterly compelling wine, and unlike any other, you have ever tried! Purity, concentration, power and richness define this very unique wine. The oak is seamlessly integrated, and the terroir of the vineyard is fully expressed. Made from dry grown old vine Mendoza Chardonnay, this highly differentiated wine is only available in tiny quantities, as we only produced 110 dozen for the world. But don’t delay, we sold 75% of production in the first two weeks of release, so it’s flying out the door! See ‘THE WINE’ section of our website for direction to the online shop.
Warm Regards, Tony Bish
Antony Bish
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