The winemaker, Katie Jones, vinifies each parcel of hand-harvested grapes separately so she knows exactly what she has. Her winemaking cave is located in an old steam locomotive shed. Katie has this to say about the challenges of this rare grape: “Carignan Gris is a pain in the ‘derrier’ for a winemaker as it is a very late ripener. And I mean very late – it actually ripens after all the reds and still comes in at a lower alcohol. I would imagine that this is the reason why most of it has been ripped up. In our first vintage with this grape we thought that it was never going to ripen. We finally picked it mid-October.”