Renishaw Hall Vintage Cuvee 2021 2021

Appearance – fine small bubbles and light mousse with a light straw hue Aroma – hints of lemon zest, apple, lychee, shortbread biscuit Taste – lemon meringue pie, apple, biscuit, jammie dodger, crème fraiche, beautifully balanced.

All of our vines are leaf stripped and shoot thinned giving the fruit maximum exposure to sunlight, this increases lactic acid and decreases malic acid resulting in ripe fruit. Leading up to harvest we are constantly checking the sugar acid ratio to ensure that we have balance. As we are north we leave the fruit on the vine for the longest period possible ensuring super ripe fruit, as the summers are not overly hot this means we get sugars on our grapes destined for sparkling wine somewhere near 10 -11% potential alcohol – which is the perfect range. During the harvest the fruit is all hand-picked ensuring that no bruised or non-perfect fruit enters the press. The picked fruit is then taken directly to the winery and pressed that day.

First task is the pressing of the grapes, all of the sparkling wines from the English Wine Project are whole bunched press, we do not crush and destem as although this practice leads to greater yields and potentially more varietal flavour, in my view it can also lead to some off notes. Following the press, the juice is allowed to stand for 24 hours before being racked off. After racking inoculation takes place with yeast and a MLF bacteria to increase, the yeast is designed to aid the varietal characteristics, whilst the MLF softens the acids from malic to lactic bacteria. The fermentation is a controlled process and the juice/wine is fermented for approximately 3 weeks until dry and the sugar has converted to alcohol. Post fermentation the wine is now racked off its gross lees and allowed to settle for approximately 8 weeks, during this period the wine is racked no fining agents are added as it will become stable during the secondary fermentation process – making it a vegan and gluten free product. During March the year after harvest the wines are put through secondary fermentation (traditional method) – this involves pitching yeast to ensure we have the correct level of multiplication this takes approximately 5 days making sure that the yeast is expanding at the required rate. Following this stage the base wine is then mixed with sugar (24 grams per litre) and bottled. The secondary fermentation converts the sugar to CO2 and alcohol meaning that in bottle there are between 6-7 bars in pressure and a 1% increase in ABV. After the bottling the wines are stored in the dark at a constant temperature for at least 18 months. This allows time for the autolytic flavours to develop, without this time the wines would ‘just’ be fruity. Following the secondary fermentation stage the wines are dis-gorged and dosage is added to ensure that there is the required sugar to acid ratio.