Picking the grapes

It's time to get sampling!

Closer to harvest we go out sampling the fruit in the vineyard. At this stage we are looking for that perfect point when the flavour of the grape is concentrated, the sugars and acids are in balance. At this point, the grape picking process begins. Ripeness, weather, and diesease can all impact the grapes and the quality of the wine. Ultimately, the grapes are in charge of when they’re ready!

Lets get crushing.

Crush, crush, baby...

Next the grapes are brought back to our urban winery in Battersea. We process the grapes differently depending on the wines we're going to be making. For example, red wines are steeped in their skins to bring out flavour and colour. White grapes might simply be pressed where the juice is fermented to make white wine. Treat white grapes like red grapes and allow them to rest on their skins, to bring out extra flavour and create orange wine.

Now time to store...

Barrel or stainless steel?

In our urban winery, we have a selection of barrels and tend to ferment a lot of our wines in these. This adds a small amount of flavour and texture that you don't get if you ferment wines in stainless steel.

We also mature the wines in barrel as this can help concentrate the wines and allow them to evolve in a different way.

Bottle up.

Cork or screw cap?

Once the wines are ready, it's time to get them bottled up. To do this we move them to a contract winery who help us to put them through a bottling machine. We can choose the style of bottle as well as whether it wears a cork or screw cap!

Glasses at the ready

new wine in coming...

And there we have it! Wine ready for you to drink in store made in our very own Urban Winery. Once bottled, the wine goes out to all our venues so everyone can enjoy the latest harvest tastes.