Farmed organically by ourselves, this is our second vintage from Stoneface Vineyard. Grown higher up on the Naramata Bench, on calcareous and sandy loam soils, cascading down an alluvial fan from the mountain. A slower and drier start to the growing season, which saw explosive growth after flowering, a hot and dry summer led to an earlier than usual and very condensed harvest. After the late 2022 freeze event, there wasn’t an abundance of fruiting buds, but what did survive received great concentration of flavour. The lighter harvest determined that we would not have enough fruit to produce single varietal bottlings from the vineyard, instead, leading us to press and vinify everything together as one bottling.
Close to equal parts of Riesling, Pinot Gris and Gamay were all harvested on the same day in mid October. We put all three varieties into the press together for a direct whole cluster press without any maceration at all. Settled overnight in stainless steel, then racked to two neutral 500L puncheons. After a natural fermentation in barrels plus malolactic, we then added 25ppm of sulphur, gave the barrels a gentle stir and left to age on fermentation lees for 5 months. Bottled unfined, unfiltered and by hand at the end of March.
Nose: sea salt / mandarin orange pith / meyer lemon
Palate: white pepper / quince / bartlett pear / fresh yarrow