'Courtney' 2021 Nero Di Troia

Grapes grown in Puglia, Italy.

Hand harvested then shipped by Renegade in refrigerated trucks at 2˚C direct to the London winery.

Wine fully made in London, UK.

So this is just the kind of wine we love making, especially when it turns out like this. A slightly unloved and undervalued grape variety, grown in a poor region of Italy, given a new and different lease of life by the Renegade team.

If you know and are familiar with this grape variety, this wine may not be what you expect. Often these wines are very chewy, bold, tannic and have a raisiny palate weight. They are often big, deeply coloured wines. This wine is not like that at all. This wine has much more of a Pinot Noir-esque elegence.

Picked fresh by hand while it still had a nice amount of acidity left and whizzed to London, we fermented this wine in x2 batches. Both destemmed by hand, one tank was fermented wild using only naturally present yeasts, the other half was fermented in a chilled tank and we used a new and aromatic yeast strain to add a freshness, cleaness and directional aroma profile. This wine was then aged in combination of New French oak and secondary French oak barrels.

This is an unusal wine. Medium bodied, soft and silky but with a palma violet and cardomon aroma and a palate of cherries and figs.

A really moorish wine suitable for both food as well as drinking on it's own.

Courtney is a freelance chef who lives in South London. We met him while he was working in Central London and he had a very rough 2020. He had a really unlucky rollerblading accident and broke his hip/pelvis. The poor lad was bedbound for most of 2020 but did manage to come in again for the photo shoot in December for the 2020 vintage. We have made this again as we really love it.

If anyone cares, this wine, like all our wines, is vegan friendly. This does not mean they wave to vegans in the street, they are just made without the use of any animal based winemaking products.