WineAlign

[Full disclosure: I am a Fielding Wine Club Member]

For a winery especially for small boutique wineries, Wine Club members are vital to their existence.  They provide a important stream of revenue, a loyal customer base and act as Ambassadors for the brand.  To reward these loyal club members, a winery will sometimes produce a wine made exclusively for them.  Fielding Estate Winery in Beamsville recently announced that they are producing the “Friends of F.E.W.” – the 2008 Wild Fermentation Chardonnay.  As Richie Roberts, Winemaker explains “The concept behind this project was to create an exceptional wine in extremely limited quantities – a production so limited that we could offer just one or two bottles a year to our most loyal friends. Occasionally in our cellar we have a barrel or two of wines that are so interesting it would be a shame to lose them in a larger blend, so this is an ideal fit for wines that are truly the winemaker’s selection.”

Roberts explains the selection and production process: “Sourced from our oldest vines in the Jack Rabbit Flats Vineyard (Lincoln Lakeshore) and planted twenty years ago, two rows from this block of vines and by reducing the yields to help concentrate the flavour in the remaining clusters on the vines. We hand harvested, sorted, and gently whole cluster pressed the berries, keeping only the light pressings for this wine. The juice was cold settled in stainless steel then racked into two barrels, one new French oak barrel and one older French oak barrel. Underwent a “wild fermentation” in barrel whereby the native yeast on the bloom of the grapes’ skin completed the fermentation. – Malo-lactic fermentation in barrel, following which the two barrels were combined and the older French oak barrel was refilled with the wine, still with the lees in suspension. Regular scheduled battonage (stirring of the lees) as the wine ages in barrel.  The two barrels from the original ferment were both from Mercury, a small Burgundian Cooper – one barrel was new and one was on it’s third fill (old).   After fermentation and MLF the two barrels were kept with their lees and combined together into the older oak barrel and still remain with their lees, with battonage (lees stirring) as needed – more frequently just after fermentation and less frequent as we approach bottling.”

The result is single barrel selected for the first bottling under a new label, “Friends of F.E.W.”.  Only one bottle will be allocated to each wine club member and Roberts will be personally hand-numbering each bottle(about 250 bottles).   The label for  “Friends of F.E.W.” label will be a twist on Fielding’s  new label design which recently won Best Label Design Award at the Ontario Wine Awards.

By the Barrel:

• Alc/vol=13.5%
• RS=3.0g/l
• TA=6.7g/l
• pH=3.75
• MLF=80% approx
• Yield=  2.5 tonnes/acre crop load approx
• Picked by hand and sorted October 19, 2008
• Very gentle long pressing up to just 0.6bar – yield just 475l/tonne.
• Harder press fraction blended into Unoaked Chardonnay later in the year.
• Fermentation =  native yeast – took nearly 7 weeks to dryness and peaked at about 22˚C

The “Friends of F.E.W.” – 2008 Wild Fermentation Chardonnay will be bottled at the beginning of September, and released in November/December for wine club members.

To Order: You must be a “Friends of F.E.W.” member.  Email Kim Doran at kim@fieldingwines.com or  visit http://www.fieldingwines.com/ to sign-up.