Prophet's Rock Vin de Paille with a glass of dessert wine

Vin de Paille 2022

Bottle of Prophet's Rock Vin de Paille

This ancient approach to making dessert wine was extensively researched and first made at Prophet’s Rock in 2016. Since then, it has become a very small but iconic part of our range. Written records of this wine style go back to at least 800 BC. A reference cool- climate region still producing this style is the Jura in France, which Paul visited as part of the research phase.

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Bottle of Prophet's Rock Vin de Paille

96 Points.
Deep gold. Lifted nose with volatile aromas of pineapple and szechuan peppercorn lead into some deeply oily, creamy aromas. The palate is intensely sweet, unctuous and voluptuous—given definition by incredible acidity and a powder-fine phenolic grip on the decadently sweet, honeyed finish of dried pineapples. A very, very young sweet wine with a long future, this is at once light and detailed while being incredibly sweet.

Stephen Wong MW, The Real Review
writing about the 2021 vintage

This aromatic, concentrated wine retains remarkable freshness and balance through the drying process. This balance of concentration and acidity make it a wonderful food match with a wide range of cheeses, pâtés, and desserts.

Cellaring: Drinking well in its youth, this wine will also cellar for an extremely long time.

The grapes are hand-picked from the Rocky Point Vineyard, known for its warm, free draining, predominantly schist soils and some of the steepest planted blocks in Central Otago. Extensive canopy and crop management is carried out during the growing season to ensure the grapes attained full physiological ripeness with great concentration, aromatics, and flavour. Yields on both sites are kept very low and do not exceed 35hl/ha or 4.5t/ha.

The handpicked fruit is then dried on racks for 2-4 months. Extensive sorting and rotation of the fruit takes place over this time. The naturally dehydrated grapes are then slowly whole-bunch pressed and fermented using only indigenous ‘wild’ yeast. The long, slow fermentation (up to 2+ years) takes place in neutral oak barrels and the wine is matured on its yeast lees until bottling.

A cold dry September, with a cool October and November, warming to a few 30degree celsius days in mid-December. The temperatures were still mixed until mid-Jan when we had a solid run of warm days preceded by solid rainfall in the first half of the month. There were longer hot spells in February, and even mild dry weather through March. Harvest from late March went smoothly through until late April. There was only one short rain event in mid-April.

  • Alcohol 11%
  • Residual Sugar 157 g/L
  • Only 1 barrel was made.
  • Harvest dates: 15 April 2021
  • Bottling date: 15 November 2023
  • The wine is bottled under Diam cork.
  • 500g bottle weight (unfilled)