A Slow Burn

Wine Details for 2025 A Slow Burn, Skin-Contact White Wine, California

Variety: 100% Pinot Gris

Vintage: 2025

Wine Style: Orange Wine

Bottle Format: 750ml

Winemaker: Bertus van Zyl

Production Details

Fermentation Vessel: Stainless

Fermentation Details: Whole bunch and 21 days of skin contact

Technical Information

Alcohol Content: 11.8

Tasting Notes

Appearance: Orange

Aromatics: Exotic and expressive, revealing a complex nose of mandarin orange peel, white peach, honeysuckle, and chamomile.

Palate and Structure: A texturally driven, mid-weight entry. Fresh citrus, apricot, and orchard fruit flavors give way to a signature, savory, tea-like structural grip that stretches long and persistently across the palate.

Serving Suggestions

Ageing Potential: 2028

Serving Temperature: Chilled

Food Pairings: Grilled seafood, herb-roasted vegetables, or wood-fired pizza.

Brand Positioning: Kick back and enjoy the sunset. Every evening has a moment when the Pacific seems to catch fire. The sky turns amber, the water throws back shards of orange light, and for a few fleeting minutes the horizon feels suspended in time. That’s the moment we chased with A Slow Burn.

Story: Rather than treating Pinot Gris like a crisp white, we gave it room to become something more textural. 21 days of whole-cluster skin contact slowly drew out color, aromatics, and structure without overwhelming the fruit. Known by many as an "orange wine," the practice of skin-contact fermentation is takes white, or gris, grapes and crafts them like a red wine. A notoriously slow Pinot Noir yeast carried the fermentation at its own deliberate pace, while regular punchdowns layered complexity one day at a time. Nothing dramatic happened overnight. That’s exactly the point.