For the love of… urban wine

I have a double life as a wine. A highly drinkable Riesling, in fact. It’s one of the specialities of Renegade, a winery set up under a railway arch in Bethnal Green, London.

Urban winemaking is a fascinating trend, enabled by improved cold chain transport of grapes, which allows high-quality wines to be made outside of the region where they are grown. Just like people, cities provide a place where different traditions of vinification can collide in unexpected and creative ways.

Unable to benefit from the usual appellation branding, urban winemakers are free to create new approaches that help them stand out. For instance, my wine combines old and new world techniques: grapes from Pfalz in Germany fermented with a strain of yeast common in Australian winemaking.

A new short video from The English Wine Collection is a great intro to what urban winemaking is all about, and why Renegade, and others, are making wine the London way.

The original bottling of my wine is mostly sold out now, but a new vintage with a rather different profile is set to drop later this year. I look forward to tasting what the wine renegades have come up with this time.

Watch the video on urban wine here. By the way, Renegade offer free delivery if you order online.