copy of Roka Blaufränkisch 2022

Harvested from 11 year old vines (in 2022), planted ourselves by hand into land that had lain fallow for 20 years. Low yield – around 1kg per vine. No green harvest or excessive de-budding – vines just in harmony at this point after 15 years of observational winemaking in both the vineyard and cellar. No herbicides or pesticides. Long wild cover crop. Vines are spur-pruned and we prune as late as possible, normally mid-March. All previous year's shoots are manually carried out of the vineyard (to minimise any residual disease risk) and mulched into wood pellets
 
We harvest early in the morning to bring in fruit as fresh as possible. It's not uncommon for it to be just 2 degrees as we start harvesting. We can often do a number of harvests – even though the overall vineyard size is small. Grapes are lightly de-stemmed and transfered into open 500L oak fermenters. We then add our own home-made ice "cubes" (frozen in 5L containers) to postpone the start of fermentation and get some gentle cold extraction. Spontaneous fermentation. Normally starts after 2/3 days. Gentle puch-downs by hand - maybe once a day, or less. We go by the "feel" of the cap. No temperature control during fermentation, which normally lasts about 21 days. Just prior to the end of fermentation (so still with some sugars) we press the wine in an old-style gentle "bladder" press and rack the juice into used 500L Stockinger barrels. Lees stirring once a month. Spontaneous malolactic conversion, normally in the following Spring. No SO2 added for a year.
 
After 1 year we rack the wine into stainless steel and add 20mg/l of SO2. The wine is then left for another 6 months and bottled. No SO2 additions in the last month prior to bottling. Total SO2 added is normally around 30 mg/l, with free SO2 in bottle around 15mg/l.
 
From 2024 onwards (as the new vineyard starts to bear fruit), we will experiment with a portion of the Blaufrankisch aged in a 1,000L concrete egg