New Hall Wine Estate Barons Lane Red 2022

The vines are planted on sheltered southern facing slopes in the Crouch Valley. The big skies with low rainfall and coastal breezes offer ideal climatic conditions. The vineyard is made up of London clay soils from the Tertiary age, with chalk concealed below the clay deposits. Over the years this site has proven itself to be an almost ideal place for the growing of vines in England, producing above average crops of high-quality grapes with naturally high sugars each year. The vines are sustainably cultivated with practices such as mulching the prunings back into soil, the use of a disc cultivator as a sustainable weed control method. The grapes were harvested at optimal maturity using a combination of hand picking and machine picking.

A proportion of handpicked fruit was lightly de-stemmed, leaving mostly whole berries that were sorted and transferred into stainless steel open fermenters. The grapes were cold soaked for four days prior to fermentation with selected yeasts. Daily punch downs and pump overs took place for early colour and flavour extraction, these initial punch downs gave way to more gentle pump overs once fermentation had reached one third, to avoid the over-extraction of tannins. A proportion of crushed fruit from Acolon imparted colour and rich aromatics. The wine was made without the influence of oak, showcasing the cool-climate, fruit driven style of a quintessentially English blend.