From crate to cellar in forty minutes
Fruit picked at dawn, sorted by hand, fermented in small lots and rested in a cellar that never needs an air conditioner.
Nine steps, mostly patience
Dawn pick
Hand picked into 12 kg crates between 05:30 and 10:00.
Cool room
Crates rest at 8 degrees for a few hours to bring the fruit temperature down.
Sorting table
Six people pick out leaves, damaged berries and anything unripe.
Destem and crush
Gentle machines that leave most berries whole for the reds.
Ferment
Small open vats for reds, cool steel tanks for whites and the rosé.
Press
A slow basket press for the reserve, a pneumatic press for everything else.
Rest
Reds go to oak barrels in the cellar; whites rest on their lees in steel.
Blend and taste
Every lot is tasted blind by the team before any blend is decided.
Bottle and number
Bottled on site, numbered by hand, rested again before release.
Nine metres under the ridge
The cellar was dug in 2015 using local labour and a single hired excavator. The hill above keeps it at 17 degrees with 70 percent humidity in every season, so the barrels need no cooling at all.
Fermentation tanks in the press house do need cooling. A 120 kW solar array and a battery bank run them through grid outages, with a small generator kept for long grey spells in August.
How each year turned out
Our own honest scoring of each main harvest, out of ten. Tap a year for the cellar notes.
2022: the best harvest we have had. Deep colour, ripe tannin and perfect acidity. The current Ember Reserve.
Short cuts we refuse
Good wine needs very little added. These are the rules our cellar has kept since 2009.
No added flavourings or colour
What is in the bottle came from the grape, the yeast and the barrel.
No bulk wine bought in
Every bottle with our name on it was grown on this hill.
No sugar added to the reds
We pick ripe instead, even if it means a smaller vintage.
No release before it is ready
The 2021 reserve was held back a full year because it needed one.
About how we make wine
Do you use oak?
Yes, for the reds. Ember Reserve spends eighteen months in barrel, Plateau Red about eight. The whites and rosé never touch oak.
Are your wines vegan?
Plateau Red, Morning Mist and the Grape Press are fined with a clay called bentonite and suit vegans. Ember Reserve is unfined.
How long can I keep a bottle?
Ember Reserve will improve for eight to ten years in a cool dark place. Drink the rosé and white within two years of the vintage.
Can I see the press house during harvest?
Yes. The harvest morning tour in February and August ends with breakfast in the press house.
Taste the difference in the cellar
Five pours among the barrels, with bread and water, for adults 18 and over.