This wine for me is what the Flint Wine Club is all about. A pure experiment, but not a safe one.

I’ve always wanted to stop a fermentation early and make a wine which is sweet due to natural sugars. In the UK and Germany it is common to back sweeten still white wines with suss-reserve or concentrated grape juice in order to balance the acidity. This isn’t something I like doing at Flint as I prefer to achieve a natural balance by getting the acid right in the fruit.

About two-thirds of the way through the fermentation, in the thick of harvest we identified two fermenting Bacchus wines that were tasting really good. One was in concrete and the other in foudre (large format oak tank). So both wines were already quite unusual in this respect.

We took about 450 litres of each and blended them together with the addition of about 100 litres Sauvignon Blanc juice that was cold-settling. This juice had not yet begun fermentation and it was fresh, sweet, tropical and zesty. Flavours you don’t usually taste in the final wine.

The blend was crossflow filtered to 0.45 μm, enough to make it free from bacteria and yeast and to prevent a fermentation happening in bottle with the residual sugar. The wine was then bottled immediately and laid down for release until now.

The resulting wine is our sweetest yet with 35 g/L residual sugar. This puts it in the territory of a semi-sweet German wine, but not quite as sweet as a typical Spätlese. But the acidity really cuts through and gives the wine a focus and clarity that sings.

I know a lot of winemakers who pop up to the winery to decant a bottle of Bacchus straight from the tank during harvest to enjoy when they’re shattered after a long day! At this stage it tastes great - really fresh, zingy but with a charming sweetness that takes the edge off its seriousness.

So I hope you can enjoy this wine for what it is. A snapshot of harvest flavours. A deconstructed wine of the 80s (don’t mention Liebfraumilch although it’s basically my take on this!). Perfect for a Summer's day, as an aperitif, after a long day at work or to indulge with over any luxurious desert.

We have an amphora and we’re going to use it.  The general principle of amphorae is to keep them wet.  A bit like a sour dough - keep the thing healthy and it’ll just get more interesting.

In 2023 year we aged 450 litres of the 2023 harvest Bacchus in terracotta.  Bacchus loves oxygen and the clay of the amphora being porous allows tiny amounts of oxygen to gently open up and soften the wine.  It turns this austere, slightly recalcitrant grape variety into something that is softer, more generous and with greater complexity.

The wine had been fermented using indigenous yeast that were present in the lees of the Silex 2023.  Native fermentations encourage slower fermentations and complexity of aroma.

During ageing it was handled very lightly.  Zero sulphite and just left to chill.  It developed a Flor yeast during this time, which rather than causing problems added to the wine’s profile.  We racked the wine, leaving the yeast behind, sterile filtered it and bottled.

So we have a different style of Bacchus here. Soft and mellow texture, a prickle of acidity, oxidised lemon, bitter orange, cut herbs and a beautifully delicate saline finish.  Showing lovely signs of ageing but with years more potential to come.

For the first year our Fumé was fermented just in concrete, oak foudres and neutral oak barriques.  No stainless steel.  In a similar way to the amphora Bacchus, these porous vessels microoxygenate the wine and result in something more complex, textured and rounder.  The Flint style that has been slowly developed over the years.

We’re one of the few wineries using concrete to make wine in the UK.  Once out of favour as an old fashioned and difficult material to use, it has come back around with younger and more experimental winemakers realizing its potential.  Not used for its ease of handling but because it contributes character to the wine - it doesn’t necessarily impart a flavour but it just helps the wine find its own personality.

The Fumé is a carefully crafted wine, blended from ten individually fermented and aged Bacchus wines.  Each made to reflect something different in the grape and brought together to create as much complexity as possible.  Extended skin contact, selected yeast strains and use of oak give a wine that is layered, structured and full of energy.

There is ripe pear and lemon on the nose and the palate is still young and fresh with a gentle prickle of CO2.  Beautifully balanced acidity but bone dry with a mouth-watering finish.  As ever with our Fumé - drink now or wait 20 years.  Either will be great!

For most, this wine doesn’t need much introduction now. And, for me, that’s kind of the point. This wasn’t the thinking when I first made it back in 2017. It was just a trial that turned out to become our most popular wine! In this case you have the very first bottles of the latest batch of the rosé. A blend of wine from the 2024 vintage with about 20 % reserve wine from 2023 just to give it a little more complexity.

I believe there is a big future for UK Charmat. English sparkling wine made in the style of Prosecco but using cool climate, highly aromatic and colourful grape varieties that sing fruit and lift it way above that Italian fizz in terms of quality and interest. We were the first in the country to try doing this. There are many more producers now jumping on the bandwagon and so I want Flint to be the one to be remembered!

Unlike most of the other UK Charmat wines, ours uses PIWI grape varieties. Some of you will know about these as they are becoming more talked about in wine, particularly by natural winemakers. Resistant to mildew and suited to our climate, they are without doubt the most sustainable way of growing grapes. Far beyond any organic or biodynamic principles because they don’t need much intervention and so their environmental footprint is way lower.

To taste….this most recent Charmat Rosé is a cracker. A lighter but more pink appearance than the previous batch. Oli and I were really happy with the blend. It’s fresh, more precise than last year’s and with a little more zip in terms of acidity. To balance we have increased the dosage to 10 g/L and there is a lovely balance of sweetness with acid. Full of freshly picked strawberries and bright fruit flavours, it is less confected than the previous and back to that clean, laser-focused fruit character. It’s pink, it’s fun, it’s sustainable and it’s better than Prosecco!

As I mentioned earlier, we tasted this next to the first ever Précoce 2017 with club members earlier this year. Strangely enough I felt it was closer in style to the 2017 than the previous 2023 vintage. I think this might be because we blended in some Pinot Noir this year. Classic, Spatburgunder, Burgundian clone Pinot which gives a little more colour and crunchiness to the wine.

Fermented using methods found both in Beaujolais and Burgundy and using traditional concrete tanks before ageing in neutral oak. This is a light touch wine that allows the fruit to shine through. Minimal maceration of the fermenting must with light punch downs and daily pump overs keeps the colour and tannins delicate.

There is more precision to the 2024 and more acidity than 2023, the latter coming from the Pinot Noir in the blend which is picked with a much lower pH than Précoce. This gives it structure and a little more ageing potential. Our Précoce of the past has been so low in acidity that it ages very very quickly. Oxidation and all chemical reactions go quicker at higher pH levels and I always found that our Précoce tasted a few years older than its actual age. Not a bad thing but an observation.

So the 2024 has a bit more colour, acidity and crunch from the slightly greener tannins of the Pinot Noir. There is less of the Beaujolais style bubblegum fruit that is typical of Précoce but still lots of lifted perfume: blackcurrant and sweet liquorice on the nose with some stoney, wet minerality in the background. Soft but focused on the palate with enough length and texture to make it worth savouring. I hope you enjoy this one. More of an evening wine than the 2023 but still light enough to enjoy for lunch if needed!

Last month we sent out the brand new Fumé 2024. This month, I thought we'd share some library stock with you.

In spring this year, as we were approaching the 2024 Fumé release, we decided to keep back 600 bottles of the Fumé 23 to age and develop, and to share when the time was right. we thought, as it's a wine many of you loved, now would be as good a time as any to send some out to you, and to make the rest available through our secret shop!

In 2023 I built upon the oaked Bacchus Fumé we had released the previous year, to strike a balance between a multitude of techniques that respect both the traditional and more novel methods of winemaking. 40% fermentation and ageing in 3rd-fill oak barrels lends texture, with the other 60% through stainless steel to maintain a bright freshness. Hyper-oxidation of some juice fractions softens the wine and use of nitrogen at the press preserves aromatics.

The Fumé is a carefully crafted wine, blended from ten individually fermented and aged Bacchus wines. Each made to reflect something different in the grape and brought together to create as much complexity as possible. Extended skin contact, selected yeast strains and use of oak give a wine that is layered, structured and full of energy.

Ripe, fleshy pear and English apple on the nose with hints of violets and Turkish delight. The palate is soft and textured but also fresh and crisp. Beautifully balanced acidity but bone dry with a mouth-watering finish. As ever with our Fumé - drink now or wait 20 years. Either will be great!