Freedom of the Press Pinot Gris Pithos 2023

This latest vintage of Pinot Gris from Freedom of the Press offers clean white stone fruit and pear in abundance, with some pepper and ginger spice. It has a beautiful texture and a backbone of citrus acidity and fresh minerality. It’s elegant, light and fresh. Made with 100% Essex fruit, which spent a bit of time in amphora – hence the name. It is a wine that is drinking well now and will develop more mid palate complexity.

Freedom of the Press is a winery in the Cotswolds. The original plan was to establish an ‘urban winery’ in Oxford with no vineyards of their own, buying the best grapes from across the country. They would operate more like an in-town micro brewery or boutique distillery than what most people think of as a vineyard. So that was the plan – they had a venue selected and then in early Spring 2020 Covid took control of everybody’s lives, and the Oxford venue fell through. But just as it looked like it was curtains for the project they found a new home, a unit on a beautiful farm above Minster Lovell in the Cotswolds, 15 miles from Oxford.