Renegade Winery 'Roger' 2023 Rondo Col Fondo

Grapes grown in Hampshire, UK

Wine fully made in London, UK

Grape variety: Rondo

Vintage: 2023

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

Cherries, blackcurrants and sloe berries - the first time we've made this wine!

It's a super deep, blackcurranty, unusual wonderland of a wine. Soft and lovely but given it's been made like a red and fermented in bottle (without being disgorged) it is fizzy but loses it's fizz quicker than most wines - very unusual - in a clear bottle so you can see the dark purpleness!

An unusual, dark and tantalizing red English sparkler. Just be careful Roger stains! 

So Roger is made in what many call the Col Fondo method (Col Fondo means 'with the bottom') a wine made just like a Champagne but not quite the same. Here, the secondary fermentation happens in the bottle in the same way as that French muck (kidding), but rather than disgorging and removing the lees/sediment you let it sit, as the Italians say with/at the bottom. 

With this wine, the grapes were destemmed by hand over wire by the Renegade team  (and a few local helpers!) then went to the tank to ferment on skins, just the way a red wine would. Rather than leaving the grapes in contact with the skins for weeks and weeks, we pressed the wine/juice off the skins slightly earlier so as to not extract too much of the tannins and fullness that you would want in a red wine. We then refermented the wine and transferred to the bottle to finish the process. We did this process in spring/early summer time, so had to use the power of our little temperature controlled room to bring the temperature down a bit - it was warm this late spring/summer at points, I promise. We like to keep the wine around the 16C mark through this process. 

This wine once finished in the bottle is finished, we don't disgorge or any sulphur or other stuff... He is as he is 'Rog'. As such, he's dry and not sweet at all, he's hazy and he's very bold. 

Roger is now retired, he was 89 when we picked the grapes, he's now 90! He is an architect and has had a fascinating career taking him across the globe. He now lives in Cheltenham!

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