Pied de Cuve Orange, 2021

A bright, medium orange colour with subtle cloudiness showing the unfined, unfiltered approach. The intense nose shows lots of orange zest, ripe stone fruit, exotic tea leaves, mandarin orange and some floral notes. Dry, intense, medium bodied with a light, zesty phenolic grip, lots of racy, mineral acidity, a spiciness - lots of baking spice, stony minerality, blossom, citrus zest and a very long finish.

Pied de Cuve are Little Farm's natural wines. these are wines that receive almost no intervention from start to finish and are therefore a pure reflection of the place, the grape and the vintage. Pied de Cuve is a technique to start a fermentation using only the yeasts that are naturally occurring on the skin of the grapes. The 2021 vintage was intense. Record heat threatened to shut down the vines and regular irrigation was needed to keep the vines ticking along. The hot season resulted in an early harvest, one of the earliest dates we have ever harvested our Riesling, on September 23rd. Yields were lower due to the heat but the flavours and intensity were excellent. The grapes were foot trodden and left to ferment naturally on the skins for around 12 days before gentle pressing and then finishing their fermentation and spending another 8 months ageing on the lees in stainless steel before settling then bottling unfined and unfiltered in August 2022