Lost in the Field “Frolic” Pét-Nat 2021

Fruit from our seven vineyards was hand picked between 1st and 14th October 2021, delivered to Off Beat Wines in Wiltshire and gently pressed in their vintage wooden Coquard basket press. The must was transferred to a 1900 litre tank where fermentation began after a week with wild yeasts. After ten days we dropped the temperature of the tank to encourage the wine to become tartrate stable, after which we racked the wine of its gross lees and tartrate crystals, which reduces the risk of the final wine gushing when opened. Fermentation continued slowly as temperatures dropped and the wine was bottled by hand on 12th January 2022 when the residual sugar was around 12 g/ L which would hopefully ferment dry leaving a pressure of around 3 bar. We bottled the wine into 1514 bottles and 404 one and a half litre magnums. As temperatures rose in the Spring the wine continued to ferment, we tasted samples every month and decided that by early April the wine had successfully fermented and the flavours had transformed from raw juice to wine. April and May were then spent arranging labels and cartons ready for release on June 1st 2022, eight months to the day after the first grapes were picked.

GRAPE: 75% Madeleine Angevine, 8% Reichensteiner, 2% Schönburger, 4% Triomphe d’Alsace, 4% Cabernet Noir 2% Rondo, 5% 15 other heritage varieties: Seyval Blanc, Frühburgunder, Ortega, Dornfelder, Solaris, Regent, Huxelrebe, Muller Thurgau, Pinot Noir, Pinot Meunier, Phoenix, Bacchus, Siegerrebe, Madeleine Sylvaner and Leon Millot.