Roka Laški 2021

Harvested from 50-60 year old vines. 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 single-guyot 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. Grapes are whole bunch slow pressed in pneumatic press – low pressure at 1.4 bar – gravity flow into the cellar. Spontaneous fermentation on gross lees (no sedimentation) in stainless steel. Normally starts after 4/5 days and often during this time the juice goes dark brown – hyper oxygenation. No temperature control during fermentation, which normally lasts 5 or 6 weeks. At end of the majority of alcoholic fermentation we rack the wine off the gross lees into another stainless steel tank (see exceptions below) and then it is left for 1 year without SO2. Spontaneous malolactic conversion.
 
After 1 year we rack the wine and add 35mg/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 45 mg/l, with free SO2 in bottle around 20mg/l.
 
Going forward, we will continue to use just stainless steel for Laski.