Mr Chenin shares his Dirty Little Secret with UK

South Africa’s Mr Chenin, Ken Forrester, is about to launch a ‘natural’ single-vineyard Chenin Blanc, called Dirty Little Secret, in the UK.

Distributed with extremely limited allocation by Enotria and Coe, the wine represents a radically different approach to winemaking from the usual employed by Forrester.

Dirty Little Secret 2015 is made with spontaneous fermentation, using minimal sulphur, with no fining or filtering from low-yielding 1965 bush vines in Piekenierskloof, close to the Cederburg Mountains in the Western Cape.

The must of the wine underwent extended soaking on skins and stalks before pressing straight into barrels for malolactic fermentation. It was then racked once with a “tiny” addition of SO2 into old, “natural” 400l French barrels (six to 10 years old) for a five-month period to rest and naturally clarify.

It was bottled unfiltered and unfined “to comply with the ‘natural’ rules and laws”, according to Forrester’s technical sheet.

Forrester, who recently sold a 50% stake in Ken Forrester Wines to Advini, a predominantly French wine estate owner for an undisclosed sum, told db he wished to make a statement in light of the publicity surrounding the so-called ‘natural’ wines of some of the younger generation of South African winemakers.

The Dirty Little Secret Wine, which comes in a special presentation package and has a wax seal, has ‘natural wine’ written in large letters in the back label.

Some observers have suggested that Forrester may be having fun with the ambiguity surrounding the term – in SAWIS regulations define ‘natural’ as meaning merely “wine of which the alcohol content is at least 4.5% but less than 16.5%”.

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“I wanted it to make a statement,” Forrester told db. “In our [Ken Forrester Wines] range, we have a family tree, if you like, of wines, This is completely not from the same family tree. It’s almost as if we were always hops farming and we’ve suddenly gone to wheat farming. Yes, it’s still farming, but in a different way.

“Zero-intervention, natural… I was a little provocative in as much as we’re playing on the name ‘secret’. And ‘dirty’ because it’s unfiltered, unfined…

“It’s not dirty, it’s completely clear, but to get it clear, what we’ve done in barrel is taken a glass tube the depth of the barrel, put the glass tube into the barrel and pulled it right off, and it gives you a picture of what’s in the barrel, and you can see literally the cut line at which point you can pour wine off.

Ken Forrester said he wanted to ‘make a statement’ with his Dirty Little Secret

“So we wait until we can take two-thirds of the barrel out [Forrester said that it took about five weeks for first settle], and then all the lees goes back into consolidated lees barrels which will clarify only that little bit on the top.

“We started with 11 barrels; we bottled five, because that was all the clear juice that there was.”

Asked what motivated this radical shift in winemaking style, Forrester said: “Something about old dogs, new tricks. I saw all these youngsters going off doing this stuff and I thought, really guys, you’re talking about natural winemaking and you think you’ve invented it. We’ve been doing it for 20 years. Let’s show you what this looks like if we apply our minds briefly!”

Forrester said that though the wine was as yet the only one of its kind in the Ken Forrester portfolio, he did have a second vintage from the Piekenierskloof vineyard in barrel – just four and a half barrels – but was not yet sure whether to release it.

“I might use that as a vehicle for experimenting, for doing what I want to do in a different vein,” he continued. “So it doesn’t have to be part of my family tree.

“This is edition one. Edition two would probably be a completely different package, and then maybe use a different grape, maybe red, maybe sweet…”

Dirty Little Secret will be sold through Enotria and Coe in the UK. The distributor has an allocation of just 360 bottles of the wine, which is expected to be sold to collectors and private clients. The wine carries a duty-paid list price of £51.

“We’re very excited to have got our hands on this super premium limited edition parcel of Ken Forrester’s Dirty Little Secret, which is an amazing example of what quality can be produced using the minimum of intervention when you have such incredible fruit to work with,” said Jon Pepper MW, Enotria and Coe director of buying and retail.

“There is so much exciting wine being made in South Africa at the moment; Ken being ever the renegade is very much part of this changing scene.”

Dirty Little Secret will be available to purchase through Enotria and Coe from 21 November 2016.