We are excited to announce that Wildflower Touched by the Side of the Sun will be available online and for take-away/collection from 12pm (Sydney time) on Wednesday 1 April 2020.
Touched by the Side of the Sun is an Australian Wild Ale made by fermenting golden wort with and by whole Chardonnay bunches from Canobolas Smith winery in Orange, NSW. To make this beer, we shoved a whole lotta freshly picked wine grapes into a single 500-litre puncheon barrel in March of 2019, topped the barrel with our Gold wort and allowed the wort to be fermented solely by the native yeast on the grapes. The beer fermented with and macerated on the grapes for 6 months in barrel before it was transferred off the grapes for bottling in September 2019. We didn’t add any of our house culture or any foreign yeast other than what was residing on the skins of the grapes at harvest.
At release, this beer shows so much Chardonnay influence. The aromatics open with bright citrus, lemon zest and lemon verbena/eucalypt drop and after opening, it develops really nicely into pear (definitely Chardonnay influence there). Stalky spice and floral notes in the background. Delicately perfumed. The palate is very upfront and concentrated. Clean and simple, yet lovely and elegant. Full of citrus, pear and earthy spice. Zippy fresh acidity and a mild phenolic grip finish the palate. It's different than many Wildflower beers in that it has very little funk to speak of. Really nice to drink, with overarching Chardonnay elements.
Like Subtle Matter, the name of this beer makes reference to René Descartes’ philosophies on optics and colour. In his mechanistic philosophy there was no room for voids and as such all space must have been filled by some invisible subtle matter. As as result, when you feel the sunshine on your skin, when a ray of daylight collides with you, it is as if you have been ‘touched by the side of the sun’ through a chain reaction of matter bouncing off each other from the surface of the sun all the way down to you.
I watercolored the artwork for the label with Murray’s (Smith, the owner of Canobolas Smith Winery) blessing. This moon, sun and star feature heavily in his own winery’s imagery and most specifically his iconic red blend ‘Alchemy’. The grapes we made this beer with however are usually reserved for his ‘Shine’ label… and thus became the major reason I chose a Sun reference for this beer.
We have 396x375ml bottles available now to order online for home delivery or collection at our cellar door ($20/bottle, limit of 6 per person).
Like all our beers, Touched by the Side of the Sun is best enjoyed when decanted off a settled natural yeast sediment at cellar temperatures (10-12°C).
