Harvest 2018 - Crushing The Grapes By Hand

Some of our wine club members came to the vineyard this week to help us pick grapes, and also to make a Pied de Cuve. This involved de-stemming the grapes and crushing them by hand.

The Pied de Cuve is now in a warm place, and will ferment over 10 days before we add it to the rest of the wine. The idea is that the fermentation starts naturally - there are wild yeasts occurring all over the vineyard, in the air, and on the skins of the grapes. This means that the wine we make using the Pied de Cuve is a natural, biodynamic wine as no yeast needs to be introduced to start the fermentation process. This gives the wine a sense of place, or terroir. 

As I write this blog, the Pied de Cuve has been fermenting for three days, and the photo above shows what it looks like at the moment. Follow us on instagram for regular updates over the next few days! And check out our facebook page where there's a video of Nick explaining why we make a Pied de Cuve.

Although not all our wines are made in this way, we have been making small amounts of biodynamic sparkling like this since 2013 and have limited quantities available to buy each year.