Having A Winemaking Philosophy is for the birds.
Faites Simple.
I was tasting our Late Disgorged 2010 with a guy who works in the trade the other day. It has no dosage and he asked why we had decided to make a wine like this. The answer is, we didn’t. We thought this was the best expression of what we had and that just happened to be how it came out. The truth is, from grape to glass, we never quite know what we’re going to get. When we make wine, we don’t have a plan or a philosophy. To use a criketing metaphor ( I must be the last person in the world still to do this) you can only play what’s in front of you.
Every year the vineyard presents us with different challenges and opportunities. This is very much part of the English Wine World. There is no such thing as an average year in our maritime climate. A summer of continuous rainfall followed by one of zero rainfall and 35 degree heat counts as commonplace. In these circumstances, you really can make excellent wine but, it is difficult to know what it will be until you have done it. This is compounded by the fact that we ferment using only wild yeasts ie those naturally occuring in the vineyard or winery. By doing this you are losing a degree of control and security but the balance is that you open up a completely new spectrum of flavour and texture in your wines.
When I worked for producers that make millions of bottles, consistency was key and you did indeed have to work harvests and winemaking to a defined end product. This isn’t a bad thing and isn’t easy. Those that get it right, Vielle Ferme springs to mind, provide quite amazing price/quality/consistency and I admire them very much not least because they make many wine drinking people happy. Making 4-5000 bottles per year in a temperamental climte is an altogether different thing.
When we set out to make sparkling wine we can control things to a degree as the second ferment, how long you mature it for and additions on bottling give you choices. Our still wines on the other hand are defined by nature. When we made our first Chardonnay I had a great Chablis in mind which with the benefit of hindsight is daft. In reality I would say it’s more like Fuisse but that’s by the by. The point is, it is its own thing and shouldn’t be compared to anything else as it has never been made before on this plot of land from these grapes.
Having a template or plan of what you want to make is essential if you are making wine for supermarkets but for us, we just let the vineyard express itself. Faites Simple.