Forrest Petit Manseng 2023

Ripe white peach, mango and zesty lemon sherbet. The delicious fruit sweetness is balanced by the wine’s naturally high acidity to delight the palate – a burst of sweet fruit, rich, full and mouth filling, yet crisp and refreshing with an almost dry finish. Perfect as an aperitif with game pate and fruit chutney on a salty biscuit.

Petit Manseng is native of the Juraçon region of the south west of France. Here it prospers, with a vigorous rambling growth, albeit producing low yielding vines, with pink/blue coloured small, tough-skinned berries. It ripens late, retains great acidity and appears to be immune to botrytis. Our small planting, in the middle of the stony Wairau River valley floor behaves very much as in the Juraçon. We have hung the fruit late into the season (May-June), allowing the grapes to shrivel a little, concentrating the flavours whilst still retaining good acidity.

The grapes were machine harvested in the cool of the morning, cold settled and cool fermented in stainless steel tanks prior to blending and finishing for bottling in spring.