Winemaking 2025

One of the excitements of winemaking is that every year is different. That was certainly the case in 2024 when we made no wine at all from home-grown grapes. In 2025 thanks to the hot weather and ensuing hosepipe ban we have probably lost most of the newly planted vines which we had gone to great lengths to procure (hoping to fill every gap). So we made a decision to do everything in the simplest possible way.

Simplest possible meant no hydraulic press and no de-stemmer. The reason for the former is obviously because being hydraaulic, a hosepipe would have been needed and in the case of the de-stemmer, it would have been almost impossible to clean it without a strong water jet. 

So we were reduced to the most basic peasant winemaking. It was actually quite exciting to see if leaving the stalks on and hand-pressing would make much of a difference. It actually didn't. Maybe the results would have been otherwise? We will never know but in the event we were quite delighted with how things turned out.

We made 12 bottlings and 11 micro-vinifications.

 

The bottling was of our 2024 Trebbiano which unexpectedly evolved into a dessert wine.We're not sure how this unintended result came about.Perhaps it was because we had held back the pressing for a week or so and the grapes may have dried out a bit.

In any event, the resulting wine took a year to clarify hence the bottling at the same time as our 2025 winemaking.  The resulting wine wasn't bad at all.

The following were the micro-vinifcations; 

 

1. Rondo

This is a bit disappointing so far. Not one of the best British Rondos. Somewhat green and grassy.

 

2. Regent.

We last made Regent in 2023. This may turn out a little better. This year we should try to leave Regent grapes longer even at the risk of losing them to the birds. 

 

3. Red Field Blend. 

 

 

4. Cabernet Noir (aka Cabaret Noir) from the left block

Better than expected. These vines are coming on slowly but nicely and the grapes are not as minuscule as in 2023. Consequentially the wine is lighter and fruitier. 

 

 

5. Fidelio

We picked later and the evolution was different from anything we had seen before. It was much slower and then we got what looked like a full Malolactic fermentation. The taste is also different of course. The wine is fuller-bodied than in 2023. It could be quite exciting to see how this develops.

 

6. Souvignier Gris

We left this in contact with the skins for a week. The colour is a very beautiful dark pink reflecting the skins. In 2023, we obtained a lovely golden colour. To the taste, this year's wine is rather assertive and stringent. We had a bit of a sore head after drinking it. We'll see if a bit of 'elevage' helps. You never know.

7. Solaris

In 2023 we failed to do enough summer pruning and picked too early. The wine has been relegated to the kitchen cupboard for cooking. This year was much more successful.

 

8. Solaris Orange

We left some of the grapes to macerate for a while and have obtained quite a nice orange wine. Only two bottles produced however.

 

9. Gli Altri.

White field blend including Calardis Blanc and Soreli in the main.

While harvesting the rest of the white grapes - we call them 'Gli altri' - we kept seeing mysterios vines with small berry bunches we realised were for the first time Soreli. We planted this ages ago and the vines didn't seem to be doing anything. They were also not at all vigorous and looked decidedly weak. Never a grape was to be seen so on picking Gli altri we were surprised to find these grapes in quite some quantity. There was also our much more vigorous Calardis Blanc and old remnants of rather unsuccessful plantings of Helios, Orion, Phoenix and whatnot.

The juice from these grapes fermented slowly but nicely and there was quite a lot of it. When it came to tasting the result was - how can we put it - disgusting. We though of throwing the whole lot down the kitchen sink but stopped short, retaining half just in case. As has happened before, that wine turned out quite differently and is altogether drinkable. Maybe it was a mistake to jettison half but in fact we have too much wine in general and are struggling to reduce our 'inventory.'

 

10. Moscato. 

Grapes bought in from Leon Fruits of Cerignola, (Foggia) Puglia thanks to Uva da Vino of London N19, aka C & M Watermelon Imports Ltd.

These were as we thought the only bought-in grapes this year. We has liked working with Moscato a few years back and this time used a special yeast to ensure a dry version. This was the first time we had used a commercial yeast other than when a stopped-fermantation had needed it. The action was impressive with an immediate and dramatic fermentation, We are very happy with the result. 

 

11. Moscato Orange.

Again we thought to macerate some of the Moscato grapes in order to produce a Moscato Orange. The wine is very orange indeed. A shade on the mouth-puckering side but nice if you like that sort of thing.

 

12. White and Red blend

A cheeky one this. We had some red and some white left over so we carefully blended them together. The result is not bad at all. We read that this 'promiscuous' blending is becoming 'a thing.' So we have to be up there in the vanguard.

 

13. Cornita/Cornisa/Cornitza. 

We mentioned Cornita in our post of December 19th. The tale of how we came to be making wine from this exceptionally rare and little known Romanian grape variety (out of Moldova) is very exciting. It came about thanks to a post on our winemaking What's App group from a person called Liviu in mid-September. In answer to someone else's question Liviu mentioned that his beautiful red grapes were Called Cornisa and came from Moldova.

We contacted Liviu who is a very collaborative and nice person and he offered to import some of these grapes for us. Apparently mini-vans ply between Moldova and the UK on a weekly basis and so it was that about a month later we collected 6 boxes of Cornisa from Liviu and pressed it immediately.

The grapes were clean and healthy showing no sign of the delay or the journey. After a short maceration, winemaking was a breeze with easy fermentation which nonetheless went on for rather longer than anything else. At the end, 3 months later we were disappointed that the lovely fruity and fresh quality we had tasted during the fermentation process seemed to have gone and what was left was just a rather rough and primitive wine or so we thought. We reckoned that the reason was due to the fact we had done only one racking so we racked the wine again. The residue and the fermenter itself didn't smell very nice at all. Were we b***ered? 

We siphoned 3 bottles-worth of the last remaining wine in the fermenter, the wine containing quite a few lees. A couple of weeks later having stood these bottles upright to allow the sediment to settle, we tried the remaining clear wine at the top of the bottle and marvellous to say, the wine was everything we had hoped it would be during the early stages of the fermentation.

'On ne sait jamais avec ces choses.' *

*Memorable words uttered by the gnarly old Maitre des Chaix at Chateau Lascombes when he announced that they had made a wine from the disastrous 1963 vintage.