We are excited to announce that you can now buy 'The Secret Vineyard' wine on the 'Juiced Wines' website. If you follow the link to check them out, you won't fail to be blown away by the beauty and colour of the website. It looks at first more like a website selling very cool art, but then you see all of the cut outs of super creative, fun and captivating wine bottles.
Juiced Wines, run by a guy called Luke and his family, specialise in natural and minimal intervention wines. The clue is in the name to a certain extent, natural wines will have been made as naturally as possible. So starting in the vineyard, viticulturists will endeavour to use zero or minimal chemicals and will be very focused on enhancing the health of the soil. The theory is that you put as much goodness back into your soil as possible and your vines will be healthier, more disease resistant and will yield more flavoursome grapes.
Wine makers will potentially use wild yeasts that exist already on the grapes and in the vicinity of the vineyard and even winery. These wild yeasts are sometimes harder to control during fermentation, but they can result in a more unique and complex result, verses a homogenised commercial yeast made in a lab.
Sulphur dioxide will be kept to a minimum and zero additives in the way of added acids and fining agents. Fining and filtration is less harsh and more natural. The result is sometimes a cloudy or spritzy wine. Some of the wines can also be really pure and full of character, they are said to express more in the way of terroir (the French word for wine expressing uniqueness and a sense of place), due to them being made in a less invasive way. The grapes are 'gently guided' through the fermentation and kept in as natural a state as possible.
Juiced have a wide range of wines from all around the world, not just natural wines, but all with a unique story, for being super local (like us), using regenerative farming techniques, minimal intervention, organics or biodynamics.
The other super refreshing thing about the website, is that Luke is committed to making wine accessible and comprehendible, so you'll find tasting notes that make sense to everyone, 'Earthy with a fruit-forward approach consisting of cranberry, red plum and fresh pomegranate. Smashable AF and a wine you have to tick off the list!' And they might make you laugh and not because they sound pompous and abstract (like some tasting notes you might come across).
Natural wines are not for everyone, they sometimes need to be approached with an open mind. There might be smells and flavours that taste like a wine fault, but some are less out there than others. The other thing to bear in mind, is that some of these wines need to be finished the same day that you open them, or in some cases the same hour. This is due to the lack of antioxidizing sulphur dioxide. The great thing about buying from Juiced, is that they can guide you in terms of how avantgarde a wine might be and whether it will work for you. They also have a large range of mixed cases available, so you can try a hand-picked selection of wines in each category.