Technical Specifications

The vineyard is a little under 1,000 vines in exactly one acre.  The trellis is a variant of Double Guyot, but with higher wires than traditional, which helps deter some predators (rabbits!) and makes working in the vineyard, and harvesting, easier.  For those who like numbers, that’s 271 posts and over 10 kilometres of wire!

Half of the vines are Pinot noir, a traditional winemaking vine producing grapes with black skin but white flesh – which is why you can buy Pinot noir as a still red wine but also as a major component of sparkling white wines.  The longer the winemaker leaves the skins in after crushing, the more colour.  Pinot noir is a classic champagne grape, with a complex high quality taste, but rather temperamental.

The other 500 vines are Seyval blanc, a vine producing grapes with a green/yellow skin and white flesh.  Seyval (nicknamed “Save-All”) is a robust, disease-resistant hybrid.  While Seyval can be used on its own in wine, it serves best as a reliable base for the classier Pinot noir.

In any year, the vineyard can produce as little as a ½ tonne of grapes, or as much as 4 ½ tonnes, depending on the weather during the growing season – late frosts, wet summers, droughts etc. etc. etc., but the average is about 2 ½ tonnes, about 2,500 bottles.  Each year we produce our white wine, rosé wine, or both, depending on how big the harvest is for each grape variety.