A perennial favourite, Wildflower St Henry 2022 will be available online and for tasting and take-away/collection at our cellar door from 12pm (Sydney time) on Friday 2 September 2022.
St Henry is our beer made with apricots named for my nephew, Chris and Em's son. If you weren't aware by now, our 'St' beers are those named for our children, each made by marrying aged ale from our barrels with freshly harvested fruit grown here in NSW. We chose the fruits to match each of the kids personalities or characteristics years ago and they still hold.
This is the fifth edition of St Henry, yet only the fourth using apricots as we used white peaches in 2019 due to poor flowering. As in '18 and '20, the '22 was made with tree ripened, fresh Trevatt apricots from Thornbrook Orchard in Nashdale, NSW.
These apricots were picked and brought to Sydney in early January 2022. After some time letting them get super duper ripe, we blended in three barrels of Gold from our cellar with ages of 18 months, 7 months, 19 months and allowed the two to ferment together and macerate for nearly 5 months. It was then gently moved off the fruit for bottling.
There's a wonderful purity to the nose of Henry this year. Ripe, fleshly, perfumed sweet apricots. However there’s Gold there too, citrus and spice, overshadowed but present. Intensely fragrant and lifted. Complex palate, apricot abounds, apricot skin, flesh and kernel weave in and out across the palate. Musk, citrus, fresh pineapple and spice add layers to the palate. Restrained yet lavish in its expression of apricot. Tempered acidity and fine oak result in a persistent finish to savour.
The base beer is brewed entirely with certified organic cereals from Chris and Sam Greenwood's farm in Coleambally NSW. Organic raw red wheat with organic schooner barley malted to a pale roast by Voyager Craft Malt. It is made with filtered Sydney water and Motueka (NZ) and Saaz (CZ) hops. Finally, it was fermented with our house culture of microflora wholly foraged from native flowers in NSW. It was bottled on 8 June 2022 and naturally conditioned through refermentation for 12 weeks. At bottling it was 5.6% ABV and 1°P (FG = 1.004 SG).
St Henry 2022 is packaged in 750ml bottles and 1.5 litre magnums. Please see the product page for allocations and limits.
Like all our beers, St Henry 2022 is best enjoyed when decanted off a settled natural yeast sediment at cellar temperatures (10-12°C).
Enjoy.
