If you’re fortunate enough to bump into this local legend of the wine industry, you may not want to shake his hand. “Over harvest from March to May, I’ve got black hands and I’m covered in vat juice,” says Esk Valley’s senior winemaker, Gordon Russell.
He’s also at his fittest, the by-product of the manual labour involved in producing one of the country’s most recognised wines. Their range of whites and reds are hand-plunged in old concrete vats, a physically demanding technique that forces the skins back into the wine. Elsewhere in the process it’s very much a “hands-off” approach, says Gordon, with barely any machinery used.
