English Sparkling Wines
Renegade Urban Winery Jamie Nat Fizz 2024
Aromatic, fresh, punchy wine, majoring on elderflowers and peaches
Hand harvested in Herefordshire then shipped by Renegade in refrigerated trucks at 2˚C direct to the London winery Dry. Elderflowers. Peach. Apricots. Aromatic and Fresh. English sparkling wine the way it could be!!
So Jamie is a ‘Nat Fizz’ (Naturally Fizzy). The French call this style ‘Pet Nat’. Essentially this wine ferments and goes fizzy in the bottle using only the naturally occuring yeasts and underlying sugar present in the grape juice. Renegade don’t add anything at all to this wine. They press the grapes, ferment the juice in chilled stainless steel tanks before transfering the still fermenting wine to bottle before the end of the first and only fermentation. In case you are not aware, Champagne, Cava, Prosecco, Cremant and almost every other sparkling wine style globally undergoes two fermentations.
This is a hard wine to make in a consistent, clean, fresh, predictable and repeatable style. It is not a wine you can make in a bulk, industrial style. It is a tough one to get right. Renegade only make around 2,500 bottles of this wine a year. They add nothing at all. So no fining, addatives, sulphur, filtration or sugar, water, animal based products or riddling agents. Literally this is grape juice fermented in a bottle.
And the name? Jamie works as a machine operator in Essex. He’s a lovely bloke and this bottle is Jamie at 43 yrs old.
When Renegade started making wine in 2016, they were copycat winemakers, asking the growers how they should make wine with their grapes. They soon realised this was a mistake. Taking advantage of the relative lack of legislation in the UK over terms and styles of wine, and drawing on London’s history of innovation, they sought instead to lead the charge on new wine styles and winemaking approaches, using both ancient and modern techniques. Renegade now make around 12-14 wines a year, from classical
styles with a twist to wines that are entirely unique. Alongside the core range, they make a variety of new styles each year.
And who’s on the bottle? As a UK producer, Renegade wanted to celebrate the best thing about the UK. The weather? No. The people! Each label shows the eyes of a different person who lives in the UK. They may not be born in the UK, they may not have gone to school in the UK, but they’re part of this country. They each form a key part of the rich tapestry that makes the UK special. As as urban winery based in London, many of the faces are Londoners. But anyone can apply to be on the labels. Faces of Renegade have been students, plumbers, researchers, the unemployed, the retired, newspaper editors, receptionists, teachers and HR executives. They are aged between 19 and 70+. They are white, black, Asian, mixed race. They are straight, gay, transgender, queer. They are from all walks of life. Could it be you next?
