The grapes were handpicked into small lug baskets and manually sorted on a conveyor before the stems were removed. The destemmed berries fell onto a vibrating table in order to remove jacks and substandard berries before dropping uncrushed into small 500kg open-topped fermenters. The grapes underwent a 3-day maceration before spontaneous fermentation began. A gentle délestage program was charted, whereby all the juice ran from the tank daily, to allow any unwanted lees to settle out and for the cap to completely collapse before running the juice back over the crumbled pomace. The grapes remained on skins for 10-12 days before being run off their skins to tank with the remaining marc gently basket pressed. The wine settled overnight before being racked by gravity to barrel. Malolactic proceeded in barrel followed by a light sulphuring after which the finished wine spent around 10-11 months undergoing maturation. During this period each and every barrel was tasted every 6 weeks and notes and scores logged to better understand our knowledge of clonal, soil and barrel selection. No finings were generally necessary, and the wine was simply racked and lightly filtered prior to bottling.

BARREL SELECTION: A small number of artisanal coopers were selected, all from Burgundy and only French oak was chosen. Importantly, each clone and soil type was micro vinified as separate batches. Each batch used an algorithm that we have developed to ascertain which coopers work best and how many new and used barrels were utilised. Overall, the average in 2018 was 20.6% new oak; 73.8% 228 l and 16.1% 500 l and 10.1% in breathable eggs.