Little Farm Pied de Cuve Chardonnay 2018

A deep orangey gold with the nose showing ripe peach, nectarine, baking spice and yeasty, lees notes with some flint and toasted hazelnut. The palate is full bodied, intense and complex with grilled nectarine, toasted almond, pineapple, peach, lemon zest and golden apple with a hint of butter. Crisp, racy and mineral on the palate with a long, salty, mineral finish.

Enjoy through 2030

Similkameen Valley

Pied de Cuve are Little Farm's natural wines. 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. Pied de Cuve is a technique to start a fermentation using only the yeasts that are naturally occurring on the skin of the grapes. The cool 2018 vintage, coolest in last 5 years, was perfect for making the light, fresh, crisp style of Chardonnay we like at Little Farm with just 12.5% alcohol. 

The grapes, in their 10th leaf, are organically farmed in the mineral rich, calcium carbonate soils of the Mulberry Tree Vineyard in Cawston, Similkameen Valley. 

Three clones are used (76, 95 & 548) and our winemaking is hands off, using old neutral barrels and lees aging to give texture and complexity. Gentle whole cluster pressing, neutral French oak barrels, wild yeast and 10 months lees ageing before natural settling then bottling in September 2019.

Little Farm Winery is the small hands-on operation of Rhys Pender MW and Alishan Driediger. It started with a passion for wine and developed into growing and producing Chardonnay and Riesling from our Mulberry Tree Vineyard at our home in Cawston. Our goal is to make wines with minimal manipulation and intervention and to really capture the growing season.

Little Farm Winery will never be big and will always focus on making small batches of single-vineyard wine that reflect each site´s unique characteristics. Our goal is to make interesting, characterful, natural-ish wines and look after our little farm.