Matt Gregory The Ancestral White 2022 20L 11% VOL

Matt Gregory, The English Winemaker

Wine: The Ancestral White

Region: Leicestershire

Grape: Bacchus

Colour: White (Sparkling)

Alcohol: 11%

Size: 75cl

Producer

Working as a wine merchant in England for over 20 years, Matt Gregory eventually started making his wines in Sussex and New Zealand, where he worked alongside Theo Coles (of The Hermit Ram in North Canterbury). Matt?s wines originate from England and Italy and are labelled ?The English Winemaker?. He has a natural approach to winemaking and allows the different terroirs to express themselves. The English wines are produced from grapes grown at the organically farmed Walton Brook Vineyard (two hectares, south-facing) on the Leicestershire Wolds. Soil includes 200 million-year-old Jurassic fine-grained limestone (mud made from carbonates of coral and shell) overlain with two million-year-old glacial deposits featuring limestone, flint and ironstone. 

Farming and Winemaking

The Ancestral White is an English, dry, lightly sparkling, white wine. Made of pure Bacchus carbonically macerated for 10 days, then pressed in a traditional basket press and fermented in glass demijohns (by adding a Pied de Cuve culture started in the vineyard 10 days before). Some of its reserved juice was returned to the wine just prior to bottling. Unfined, unfiltered and no added sulphur.