Renegade Urban Winery Janet

The benefit of being an urban winery that works with small vineyards is that you can cherry pick the best fruit, grown by the best people to make your wines. Not limited to the UK alone, Renegade source 50% of their grapes from European countries, such as France, Italy and Spain, while the rest come from vineyards closer to home.

Wherever they come from, the grapes are hand-harvested and put into small crates, keeping them intact for the journey ahead. They are shipped to London in refrigerated trucks, set to 2 degrees to stop any fermentations from occurring en route. Once at the winery in Walthamstow, the winemaking team process the grapes. So, whilst the fruit may come from overseas, everything else happens in London, making them English wines.

Janet is a skin-contact Malvasia, whose grapes come from the Puglian region of Italy. A textured, golden-coloured wine with nutty, honey and savoury aromas.

The grapes were destemmed by hand and transferred to stainless steel tanks. Yeast was added and fermentation lasted for 10-15 days, after which it spent another week on the skins before being pressed off. It was then transferred to oak barrels, where it aged for 7 months and underwent full malolactic fermentation. It has been lightly filtered before bottling, so is much clearer than many other orange wines. Want to know who Janet is? Janet is a 27 year old design manager from Mile End.