Bottling it

Finally got round to bottling my wine today. Made from a vineyard in Surrey, I ended up with 40 bottles of white and 66 of red. It's the red I'm most excited about. Both were made quite naturally, with no sulphur dioxide added until after malolactic, and the red has withstood the rather oxidative winemaking style a bit better.

The red is a blend of Regent and Dornfelder, harvested ripe and in very good hygenic condition. There was a strict selection for the best grapes, carried out at the same time as the hand destemming. Fermentation was in five gallon buckets, with foot treading and hand plunging. It then went into 1 gallon demijohns after pressing, where it remained without racking on its lees. I've chosen to bottle early while it can still take the oxidative insult of the bottling process in its stride. No filtration or fining was required.

As you can see from the picture, it's quite a dark coloured wine, but it's elegant enough, with good acidity and grippy tannins. There'll be no hurry to drink it up, but it's a natural wine meant for drinking soon, rather than a vin de garde. Assuming malo really has finished, I think it will be the sort of wine that I enjoy drinking. 11 demijohns were bottled separately rather than being blended together, so there'll be a degree of bottle variation. I can live with that. I'm delighted with how it's turned out.