weird dark rose project

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You may already be aware that I have a couple of wines on the go this year and have more plans for the next. Either way I thought I’d give a quick run-down of what my long term plans are.

I currently have about 1450 bottles worth of a dark rosé Pinot Noir and Meunier sparkling wine base wine in barrel at Langham in Dorset. This is along with 2 barrels of a 50/50 Pinoton and Germanic clone Pinot Noir dark rose that I have in barrel with Sergio at Black book in Battersea.

My plan for all this is actually to get involved with the vineyard from which the Dorset Pinot came as I think it has the potential to deliver some really exciting wines. 

Sadly I'll probably not make another wine with Sergio next year as it’s not really practical splitting myself between two different wineries, so the future plans are mostly Dorset based. 

However, the wines that I plan on making in 2023 are:

Sparkling rosé de saignee homage a Larmandier Bernier. This will be ¾ Pinot Noir, ¼ Meunier, roughly 18 hours on skins, fermented in used barrels and then given a traditional method secondary fermentation in bottle. I’ve chosen this as I think it’s currently the best way of showing off the Dorset chalk Pinot fruit.

Inspired by the winemaking of the late 70s and early 80s in Chablis I’m going to make my own version of a pre climate change Chablis. The Chardonnay in Dorset comes in at about 10.6% potential alcohol at the end of October, this is the long slow ripening that the Burgundians used to covet. I’ll chaptalize up to about 12%, press it hard in an old pneumatic press to get some oxidation in the juice at press and drop out some of the extra phenolics while tempering the overt fruit. Fermentation will be again in old barrels and I’ll probably give it a decent pre bottling sulphur with the idea that it’ll need a few years to come around, just like Chablis did in the good old days. 

I’m aware that both the Sparkler and faux Chablis will be wines that take time (in particular the saignee won’t be ready for release for a minimum of 3 years post-harvest) so I’ll also be reprising the dark rosé vin de soif but in more of an old school Irancy fashion so there’s a wine for the following summer. This will be alongside a pet-nat and a canned piquette made with the marc. 

My goal is to make what I think can be genuinely great wines with the saignee and the Chardonnay alongside some more everyday wines for cash flow. 

I’m going to prune the Dorset vineyard this year and hope to be heavily involved in the running of it with a view to leasing it from the year after next, for which I have a whole host of plans to move it in a more regenerative direction with sheep, some mixed in fruit trees to mix up the mycorrhizal population and get deeper into the chalk sub soil. 

Obviously all this is going to be quite capital heavy, so if you'd like to get involved and help out financially please get in touch.