Saboteur White

Seafood, Poultry, Vegetarian

Some people describe Luddite Shiraz as Niels Verburg contained in a glass; Niels is six foot four and when he smiles appears to be beaming an embrace in your direction. As a young winemaker traveling the world Niels confirmed his love for Shiraz when working a harvest in Australia but it was a winery in Chile that inspired his wine-making method ‘It was as if I’d gone back 20 years it was ramshackle chaotic but they had great fruit and passion and I’d never seen that quality of wine.’

As the Luddite Saboteur White gains more following, we continue to grow this wine always keeping quality in mind. For the first time, a small amount of Semillon has been included in the blend keeping things exciting. Harvest was split in the middle by a week of very warm weather. We were lucky to get most of the grapes in for this wine before the heatwave which keeps our style of being fresh, but still full-bodied with lots of texture.

All the components spent 11 months in old French Oak barrels with regular batonnage.

We continue to have skin contact on the Chenin and Viognier to give some tannin, texture and structure to the wine. Both varietals spent 10 days on skins with morning and evening punch-downs. We then pressed, taking as much lees and sediment to barrel to complete the fermentation. We also did a small portion of tank fermentation Chenin Blanc for extra primary fruit. The Sauvignon Blanc is whole-bunch pressed and pumped directly to barrel without settling to ferment.