Sticky Fingers is made from grapes infected by the benevolent form of fungus the French call botrytis – noble rot.  (More colourfully the latin tag is botrytonia fuckelinia.) Of course, it doesn’t look so regal initially and needs nice autumnal sun to get the raisining you want.

We harvested on 1 May at an average brix of 31. The proportion of shrivelled v botrytised fruit was higher than the 2016 so the density/unctuosity of the final wine and its mouthfeel has a lightness to it.  Nothing shy though.  At around 150g/l of sugar it’s a dessert wine.

I handed the flavour profile over to an enthusiastic (but still upright) gaggle of young women at the restaurant.  Above their din here’s what they offered:  sweet (yeah!), pineapple, guava, lychees, pink apple, cocktail.  Sounds OK to me.  Sticky will go many years and once opened seems immune to oxidation.

I’ve heard that Boris Johnson usually polishes off a whole bottle at a time.  The sugar hit tends to turn him aggressive. When some bleating functionary complained that he hadn’t organised a workable tracing app such that his seaside constituency in Hove could flourish, Boris went into his best scattergun harrumph:  “Just show some guts and champion your community as a venue worthy of support”. The only guts on display were at the beach next day.