2022 Velo Rosé

Each year we put aside some time to experiment with a potential new product. Wines like the Seven Months, our Riesling Ancestral have become part of our staples via this fun part of the year. Back in 2017, after trying this lovely rosé from France, one that had spent time under a flor yeast, we thought yep, let’s do that.

Not an easy thing to do it turns out. Flor yeast are very sensitive and difficult to grow as they won’t do so in conditions it finds competitive. They can’t compete with acetobacter, other yeast strains, preservatives, wine that is too acidic or not acidic enough, noisy places and certainly don’t like being moved or disturbed in any way. It’s like trying to mate panda’s, as I say, a challenge.

The AWRI yet again came to the rescue, with the supply of a know strain, isolated in 1947, and some handy instructions on how to grow them.

After some lab time and finding a quite place to set up the barrels we introduced our new flor culture to 6 ullaged barrels of 2017 Nebbiolo rosé. The flor took to five of these, the sixth now a vinegar mother, and they sat in a quite cellar for almost two years, untouched, untopped and, worryingly, untasted.

This is the follow up batch, 2021, these 6 original barrels, now fully infected with flor, are their own biosphere, freshly pressed juice from Nebbiolo and Barbera was run into this environment and fermented out (FYI, Flor is a saccharomyces strain so can ferment sugar as well). Post primary the flor occupies the surface of the wine creating a veil that ever so slowly consumes the alcohols of the wine and protect the surface from other spoilage microbes like acetabacter. Not as long under flor, just a year so we can rotate the barrels annually.

Think of it as a slightly salty rosé, drink with salty and/or fatty foods.

Very limited

Ravensworth 2022 Velo
"Complex rose wine. So much on. Righteous. Sour cherry, cranberry, pomegranate juice, some fino sherry whiffs and licks, briny minerality and a bit of green almond and nougat here. Palate and perfume matching up. Wonderful texture that goes crisp and creamy, gently on the latter, at once. Huge extension of flavour too. Shades of Clos Cibonne here. Really. Unreal drinking" 94 points
Mike Bennie, The WineFront