2017 Mullineux Straw Wine

The 2017 Straw Wine comes from two vineyards picked at 22 to 23 Balling and laid out beneath trees at the Roundstone winery, where it dried for three weeks. It was matured for 11 months in neutral oak with around 310gm/L residual sugar and 11 gm/L total acidity. It has a very pure nose of honey, mango, quince and tangerine - very perfumed as usual. The palate is well balanced and strangely, the first facet you perceive is actually the acidity rather than the sweetness. This is very tangy, perhaps fresher than recent vintages, with a persistent, effervescent finish. (375 ml.)

The fruit is dried for three weeks off the vine. No botrytis because it is warm, dry and breezy. According to Andrea Mullineux, ‘the juice drips out of the press like honey’ Barrel fermentation lasts nine months. They allow the ferment to stop naturally and do not top up with barrels, so there is more texture from the phenolics. Toffeed apricot, bitter orange tang, unspittable viscous glory. Just fabulous. Deep and so fresh, so sweet but not cloying, pure and endless, the light tannic texture making the wine seems drier than its 350 g/l residual sugar. (JH)