Little Farm Winery is a small production winery located in the Similkameen Valley run by Rhys Pender MW and Alishan Driediger. Their wines are low / no intervention from start to finish. They use wild yeast, neutral barrel, lees ageing and little to no fining or filtering when the wines are bottled. I received two bottles of their Chardonnay. One is their Little Farm Winery Mulberry Tree Vineyard Chardonnay 2020 while the other is their Mulberry Tree Vineyard Pied de Cuve Chardonnay 2020. The grapes come from the same vineyard and generally use the same treatment for vinification. What is the difference?
The Difference – Pied de Cuve
From the winery, “The Pied de Cuve wines, those with the colourful stripe on the label, are the result of our passion for and fascination with natural wines. For those not familiar with the somewhat controversial title of natural wine, these are wines that receive almost no intervention from start to finish and are therefore a pure reflection of the place, the grape and the vintage. We have named this range of wines Pied de Cuve. Pied de Cuve is a technique to start a fermentation using only the yeasts that are naturally occurring on the skin of the grapes.
About a week before harvest we pick a bucket of grapes, crush it by foot and leave it to ferment in the vineyard. It is kept in the vineyard and away from the winery so the grapes’ own yeast can start the fermentation,
This Article was originally published on My Wine Pal
