There are so many things I love about making sparkling wine. With the traditional bottle method, the slow process is definitely one element I find compelling, but I also love the myriad different ways that we use to make wines at Westwell. Hopefully, people have tried the Petulant Nature wine we make from Ortega - this is made in the style of a Pet Nat with a single fermentation but is bottled towards the end of that fermentation so that it completes in bottle - trapping carbon dioxide and creating a gentle fizz. It’s a really exciting way of making wine - you’re never certain what the finished results will be!
We’ve also experimented with making Col Fondo which involves the addition of sugar to a base wine, usually something with good deep base flavours which then re-ferments to gain a gentle spritz and is released with the lees still in bottle. More about this soon - our finished wines will be released this Autumn.
Then we have our traditional method Pelegrim which is a real crowd pleaser of a wine: a good fruit-forward base wine with a large proportion of Pinots to give those red apple flavours, and then a second ferment in bottle with yeast and sugar added and aged for three years on lees to give a rich creaminess. We then removed these lees and top up with more wine and a little sugar to balance the crisp acidity. It’s a classic non-vintage sparkler and still one of the favourite wines that we make.
We’re really excited about showcasing all the things we’ve been doing with sparkling wine over the past couple of years, but of course these things take time (I can’t wait to release the Pinot Meunier we’ve been working on that’s been made with three vintages of grapes, all naturally fermented and bottled with no additions at all that won’t be ready for another 18 months!). The slow transformative process is one of the most exciting things but you need a lot of patience. Roll on autumn.
Our full range of sparkling wines are available HERE →.
