Speaking to TheShout at ProWein in Düsseldorf, Paxton global sales director, Brian Lamb (pictured), said the NOW wine, which is now into its second vintage, has been developed to address the no-sulphur wine category.

“NOW has been created for a part of our consumer base that is interested in not just our organic and biodynamic farming principles, but also winemaking that used no additional sulphur,” Lamb told TheShout.

“With our normal biodynamic certifications we could only use 100 parts per million with our limitations on SO2 which works out to be one-third of the industry standard, however we wanted to take it one step further with NOW and make a no-sulphur added wine. We also wanted to showcase what Shiraz looks like in its purest form, so it is what we would call a nouveau-style of shiraz, we used some of our best A-grade fruit from a selection of vineyards and then we pressed it into bottle – it is ripe bursting fruit and no oak influence and it is very easy to drink.

“The no-sulphur genre is growing in all markets. From the first vintage we were quite surprised – we did a small run, and dipped our toes into the domestic Australian market and it sold out within three months, even though we expected it to take a year to sell out our production run. So it was quite obvious that it is something that each of our distribution partners is looking for and now it is going to expand into our export markets because once they got wind of it – they asked for it too, so basically we have had to increase production five-fold for the 2017 vintage.

“We designed a sub brand label with different colours and look and feel purposely – there will probably be a future for adding new varietals to it – we will look at adding a complimenting white wine as well as potentially red varietals such as Grenache, Cabernet or even Tempranillo.

“Normally surprises in the wine industry are bad, but this was a good surprise.

Read more at source: The Shout