Born to be Wild.

Born to be wild.

In life, we all like to have a bit of control over things. That reassuring feeling that everything will go to plan and while nothing is ever guaranteed, you expect things to turn out well. In the winemaking world, this is what happens when you make your wine with a commercial cultured yeast. The vast majority of wine is now made using strains that are pretty predictable and will do the job quickly without too much risk. This being the case, why did we decide last year to go back to the wild side and let our grapes ferment with the natural yeasts to be found in the vineyard? The answer is that there is research that suggests that no two  vineyards have the same finger print and so you are tasting the unique product of our environment.

The process was pretty nerve wracking. A commercial strain does its job in a week or two but our indigenous Somerset yeasts were still slowly working away until after Christmas. The results? We couldn’t be happier. We think that our newly released 2018 White Wine has an additional character and richness that we haven’t had before. We will probably now make all of our wine this way but, I can’t say that it will be good for those nerves! If you would like to try it, call into our shop at the vineyard on a Saturday or visit Pitney Farm Shop or Wine World in Illminster.

Reccomendations – If you haven’t visited Wine World opposite the church then it’s worth a visit. They sell wine at low margins and have a constantly changing stock of interesting bottles so. I particularly like False Bay Chenin £5.99 ( which is also Wild Ferment) and a good Organic Wine from Torres called Habitat £7.99.