Two Tun Wine

Contact Us

2009-09-02T09:22:00.000Z

If you want to know more about Two Tuns then please contact us at

guy@bibelotwine.co.uk

Fame at Last

2006-12-07T11:18:00.000Z

Thanks to the Richmond and Twickenham Times for reporting our story which has led to websites taking it up and word spreading. It's amazing what technology can do with the smallest piece of information from a local paper!

Other news is that the lovely people at realale.com have decided to stock our wines - the first to do so. You can buy at their shop

Real Ale Limited371 Richmond RoadTwickenhamMiddlesexTW1 2EF

Telephone 0208 892 3710
Fax 0208 892 2986
Email info@realale.com

So, here we all are

2006-09-14T12:18:00.000Z

Summer is almost over and, almost two years on, our wines are bottled and just waiting to be labelled. We road tested them at the fabulous vivat bachus (www.vivatbacchus.co.uk) restaurat near Smithfield market. With all due humility and with 100% bias we have to say, they are everything we wanted. We came out of the restaurant with smiles on our faces ( a bottle each at lunch time will do that). The Chenin is classy stuff with a slight oak influence but predominantly fresh mineral fruit flavours - refreshing and crisp. The Shiraz is remarkably balanced for a wine that is so young but you can see that it has a long life ahead, if it lasts that long before its drunk. It is being shipped next week and arives in the UK in the middle of October. We had some obscenely decadent 3 litre bottles made as well as some magnums and some packed in wooden boxes. the waiting is killing us - patience was never one of our virtues. We are planning on having a bit of a party to celebrate its arrival, probably somewhere is West London

Too much choice can be a bad thing

2006-09-14T11:42:00.000Z

In March 2006 we went back over to the valley to take a look at how the wines were developing and to hit a few bars with Zakkie. We had our six barrels but Zakkie also had 12 0r more alternative wines that we could add if we wanted to. Shiraz with everything!! - shiraz viognier, late picked shiraz, whole berry barrel fermented shiraz (strange but wonderful), old oak shiraz......so, all afternoon we add 10cl of this and remove 10cl of that - Zakkie stands there with the patience of a saint while the two Engelsmen mess about pretending they know what they are doing. Whats the film scene where two blokes taste loads of wine and progressively get the glasses more and more mixed up and end up falling over drunk? Not quite that bad but, there was a bit of palette fatigue towards the end. Finally we have the blend - an afternoons work - the fruit of our labours, we taste it against the original six barrels - and decide that we prefer the ones we started with and don't need anything else added. Each barrel of the six tasted slightly different but when you put them together the wine is big (15% alcohol!) but balanced. The initial impression is of spicy dark fruits like a summer pudding with cinnamon added. You can taste the oak at the moment as the wine was a vanilla note but this will fade over time.

Wood

2006-09-14T11:01:00.000Z

Not that we ever come to blows but, it has to be said, the two of us have different tastes in wine. Richard likes fuller wines with lots of fruit whilst I go for more of the dry, light wines. OK, he would say skinny and thin. In this case we went for it - seven brand new French Oak barrels which immediately doubled costs and, they made us pay up front! This might seem a strange decision considering neither of us likes oaky wines but when you have intensely flavoured quality grapes barrel aging definately adds complexity and softens out harsh tannins. On poor quality it just gives a taste of plank and not much else. For cheap wine, this is exactly what winemakers add plank or oak chips.
The other decision that we took was to try not to mess about with what we had - no filtering or finning, just the occsional racking off any sediment to keep it clear and that's about it. The major reason for filtering is that the wine is more stable but what you gain in stability you lose in flavour. One result of this will be that the wine in the bottle will carry on evolving interesting flavours and may throw a sediment which would put some people off but we figured that we would know most of the people it was destined for anyway.

eMYR wYNN wILLIAMS

2006-05-30T09:33:00.000Z

When people design wine labels nowadays it tends to be a process by commitee that turns into a workshop on marketing speak with the English Language taking a distinct back seat. It's all about "empowering the consumer to browse the fixture and therefore increase share of throat via impactful presentation".

Being the professionals we are, we phoned another friend, abstract artist Emyr Wynn William and said, draw us an image. Not being a man to think in straight lines he didn't think of Two Tons of Grapes but went for the word Tun which is an old English word for a barrel that is still used in brewing and distilling. If you really must know -

4.5 gallons
= 1 pin
2 pins
= 1 firkin
2 firkins
= 1 kilderkin
2 kilderkins
= 1 barrel
2 barrels
= 1 puncheon
3 puncheons
= 1 tun

Any attempts to protest that it should either be Two Tons or Six Tuns fell on deaf ears and our wine has a name and a label.

The thing with old vines...

2006-04-25T09:55:00.000Z

As we were watching the Shiraz come in some white grapes were coming into the grape reception and the winemakers were talking about very old vines of Chenin that they usually put into Oak barrels and sell to famous names to sell under their own labels. Well, obviously we aren't exactly a famous name but if you don't ask you don't get. So, in a five minute conversation we doubled our order and took two tons. Chenin is a great grape that is capable of making anything from cheap and cheerful dry whites to incredibly sweet concentrated wines capable of aging for decades. We decided to buy one barrel to see what it was like with oak but after tasting the wine with no messing we decided to make the rest of it as simply as possible.
The thing with old vines is that they produce fewer grapes but what they do produce is much more concentrated as the vine's roots push deep into the soil to reach nutrients and sources of moisture. Sadly many producers are pulling up old vine Chenin to replace them with Chardonnay and Sauvignon which is losing something unique and irreplacable.

Ever Wonder What Two Tons of Grapes Look Like?

2006-03-22T09:11:00.000Z

Ever wondered what two tons of grapes look like? Well lets face it, probably not but, these are them - Two Tons of the finest Shiraz grown in the Riebeek Valley. The Cellars process around 1oooo tons of Shiraz in a good year but for us this was all that mattered. Sadly you can't help but want to have a look through to see if there are any underripe or rotten grapes but as you can see in the picture - harvesting by hand in the vineyard tends to take care of quality and barring the odd leaf, we had plump and healthy fruit. From a pub in Wimbledon to a tractor trailer in South Africa in six months - I have to say, patience is a virtue when it comes to agriculture.
While we were at the winery the very obvious thought occured to us which was what about white wine? But more of that next time.

A word about winemakers

2006-03-15T17:23:00.000Z

I am yet to meet a cynical winemaker. They come in all shapes and sizes but even those who make big volumes destined for various world markets cannot resist experimenting and making small lots of interesting stuff for their own amusement and education. So, when we say to Zackie that we want to make such a tiny amount that any accountant would tell you is completely unviable then of course he said yes. Having worked with wine for many years we had ideas about how we thought we wanted it to be made - carbonic macceration, cap punching, sparging, cryo extraction..........but, Zackie said - lets press it, put it in one of the small tanks and see what happens. Sort of disappointing in one way but also right. All the wine writers talk about wine expressing the land it's grown on and so why not do the non interventionist thing and see where you get to. It's a risky approach with such small quantities because if it goes wrong that's it, finished, no more, try again next year.

What starts in the pub stays in the pub...

2006-03-13T14:24:00.000Z

Lets face it , ideas that you come up with in the pub usually stay right there. There is a reason for this but, just this once, the idea of buying a couple of tons of grapes stuck. We thought all we have to do is call our friend Zackie in the Riebeek valley which is famous for Shiraz and ask him where the best grapes grow . He pointed out a vineyard below Porcelain Hill. You drive through flat open plain until you get to the Kastelberg mountain and as you go over the pass there is a spectacular view of the valley and this is where the vineyard lies. It's risky growing grapes there as you are competing with a troop ( is this the right word for a group) of Baboons for grapes but the fruit was perfect.

Some of the world's greatest wines come from pretty dull landscapes but there but there is something about places like the Mosel Valley or the Cote d'Or that are romantic and the wines seem to reflect them. I had visited the Valley once before and taken photos of this particular place but never imagined that we could be making wine from it.

So, easy we said, go ahead and we'll be over at harvest time to see the grapes in and to talk about how we want it made.

Two Blokes Sitting In a Pub

2006-03-13T12:30:00.000Z

So, two wine traders are sitting a pub over their first beer

They moan about how they spend all their time chasing containers around the world and never get a chance to do any of the interesting stuff that got them into the business in the first place.

They finish their pints and order two more

One says to the other, why don't we just go and buy a couple of tons of grapes and make some wine for ourselves, we can be completely selfish and for once not care about whether anybody else likes it. The other one replies, at least with two tons if we can't sell it, we would be able to to drink it ourselves over a couple of years, maybe with a little help from our friends.

They have a third pint

And go back to talking about football and all the other fluffy stuff that you talk about after three pints which makes perfect sense at the time but afterwards you realise was the beer talking.