This is our third time around for Gamay and we’ve learnt a lot in 12 months. Lesson number 1 is that crop thinning is especially important. Gamay will set a big crop, with big bunches and big berries and it needs to be thinned hard, 30% went on the ground. Lesson number 2: Bunches and bags. With those big berries, and in a benevolent year like ‘18, Gamay would have a tendency to be one dimensional. A 50:50 blend of 100% whole bunch ferments, and 100% carbonic maceration berry ferments in one of our infamous 1000l goon bags seems to best express the charm of this variety. (Carbonic maceration is a winemaking technique, often associated with the region of Beaujolais, in which whole grapes are fermented in a carbon dioxide rich environment prior to crushing resulting in a drink-now, fruit driven/low tannin wine).
