ANGUS PAUL Hespers Straw Wine 2021

Grapes are hand picked at ‘normal ripeness’ (21.5 balling) and cooled overnight. After this, they were placed upon a wooden drying rack in direct sunlight. For the next 4 weeks the grapes were dried and shriveled by the sun, until about 50% of the volume was lost, resulting in doubling of sugar, acid and flavour concentration.

Grapes were then pressed for 4 days to extract the most concentrated of grape syrup. Following this the juice fermented for 6 months in glass demijohns. Once the alcohol level raised to about 10% the yeast gave up fermentation and a lovely amount of residual sugar was left.

Lucious and exotic. The nose burst with notes of burnt orange, dried apricot, muscat raisins and honey. The palate is rich and sweet, moving all over the palate. Intense notes of apricot and black tea always stick out to us. Though sweet, the wine finishes with a fresh twang as the acidity clears up all remnants of sweetness.

Vespers are an old term for evening prayers in Catholicism; vesper comes from the Greek "hesper" which means the evening. Hesperia was a garden in Greecian mythology guarded by the Nymphs of the Evening, protecting golden fruit within. This all seemed to fit the character of this wine - sweet wine being such an end-of-the-night drink, its viscosity connoting the evening's last rays of sunlight, the last sips of wine almost like an evening prayer.