Our winemaking Philosophy

Sourcing our fruit

Great wine cannot exist without excellent grapes.  This is a principle that has helped define and mould the wine industry for decades. Our views are no different. The aspect, soil type, age of the vines, and grapevine clones are all major considerations that are taken into account when selecting our sites. To date, we have carefully selected a handful of growers from a range of English terroir that have the same philosophy and drive to create the best fruit possible.  As we do.

Learn about our growers

Winemaking approach

Blackbook's philosophy is simple: tradition with innovation. We feel that keeping a base of tradition gives us the ability to implement new and innovative techniques. Our ethos embraces a minimalist approach by using indigenous yeast for our primary and malolactic fermentations and where possible, low to zero sulphur use. We aim to have diversity in our wine style, where each wine has its own identity and nuances that make it unique. In order to support this, the winery uses modern day equipment to help and improve wine quality, which allows us to make processing decisions best suited for the fruit and the vintage.  

We also produce vegan wines, read more about why, and how in our blog post.

Ageing

We are a big fan of texture in wines. This is what we like to drink and try as much as possible to implement that into wines that we make. As a means to facilitate that, a majority of the wines are fermented in old french oak between 228L to 500L sizes with a small portion in steel tank. All of the wines are aged "sur lie" for a minimum of 6 months. The variation in barrel sizes and fermentation vessels have a varied impact on both the fermentation kinetics and the ageing process of our wines. The result is a diverse range of different flavours and textures exhibited from the environment that the wine is sitting in. The time spent in either vessel is determined by tasting through all the wines and making decisions based on flavour profiles.