Aaron Jolley LDN SPRITZ cofounder with LDN CRU winemaker Alex Hurley
They say necessity is the mother of invention, and for the creation of LDN spritz this is certainly the case. Former Street Feast Wine Director Aaron Jolley who created and ran a portfolio of wines bars across London including; Winyl, Winerama and Street Vin was having a problem at some of the pop-up venues he was running. All his bars used Riedel glasses, he strongly felt that pouring delicious wines into plastic disposable cups did everyone(especially the planet)a huge disservice. In recent years more strict Council policy was banning the use of glassware at many events, leaving Aaron in a bit of a difficult position, what to serve his wines in? He had to pull out of a number of big events and watched on as the beer and cider drink brands made a simple adjustment to cans.
Aaron had been a long standing customer of Roberson Wine and their wine buyer Keith Kirkpatrick had given him samples of the first generation of Californian canned wine in the past. The cans were 500ml and 12% ABV, the bulky size combined with the high alcohol didn’t give them much commercial appeal to the wine-on-the-go session drinker, but it did sow a seed of thought in Aaron’s mind. Roberson were researching into developing canned wines for a 3rd party partner but the project was canned(forgive the pun), the timing was right, the stars aligned and 18 months ago Aaron pitched a concept of a smaller 250ml can to the Roberson Team and the collaboration began.
With access to the Roberson expertise in wine handling and the state of the art winemaking facility at London Cru lead by award winning winemaker Alex the expert team set out on an adventure to make a canned wine that was completely different to anything else on the market. With our reputation as one of England’s best wineries, we wanted to make something high-quality, yet easy to enjoy on a long day in the sun - a canned spritzer that made the most of fabulous English wine.
This is where the idea for our LDN SPRITZ baby was born.
Alex had travelled through Austria and Hungary with buddies from his winemaker degree and, when they got together on their turf, white wine spritz was very much the drink of choice. Sitting in a Vienna café drinking spritz or heading out to a nightclub in Budapest, white wine spritz (Fröccs in Hungary) is an artform.
Inspired by these memories, we wanted LDN SPRITZ genuinely to reflect the wine it was made from. We did not want to add flavours or colours, but really keep things pure. The grape the whole grape and nothing but the grape.
canned wine - the winemaking
So, our team went through an extensive trial phase trying different wines styles from around Europe - Italian, French, German and English - and started the fun of making different blends of white wine spritz. We even used a basic Soda Stream to fizz up the test blends!
Early spritz test - We mixed still white wines with soda water in the LDN CRU lab
This is where our local English grapes really started to shine – crisp wines with low alcohol fitted our product perfectly! Our preferences aligned with zingy, delicately floral, pear, lemon, and lime-driven base wines. Working with some of Alex’s winemaker pals around England, we sourced from both Kent and Essex – fruit from Essex brought pear drop and citrus notes, well-balanced with zesty vibrancy, while Kent rounded out the blend with riper hints of peach and elderflower.
LDN CRU winemaker Alex sampling a fresh mix of spritz
Once we had the wine ready, it was time to start planning for the canning. Canning wines - and particularly canning wine spritz - is a relatively new thing, so we entered an extensive phase of canning trials.
For the first two trial runs we worked with a small facility in Kent. This facility required we pasteurise the contents, heating them to a temperature of around 72c for around 30 minutes. This works well for beer and fruit juices, but for wine there are several key problems. First, the flavours and aromatics of the wine became a little confected and jammy, but most adversely, the heat limited the amount of dissolved CO2 we could put into the can as they would expand and deform. Yet, for our spritz we wanted a serious level of fizz!
ldn spritz launch time!
So, in early 2021, after some 12 months of testing, blending, and working with our initial trials, we took a big leap forward and began working with a state-of-the-art canning facility. Moving from small trials to a much larger run gave us access to greater technology and allowed canning without pasteurisation. Avoiding this process markedly improved the taste of our Spritz and critically allowed us to maintain the fizz levels we dreamed of....
So now for the fun part! You have a chance to try LND SPRITZ right now, buying direct from our website, Roberson Wine, Brixton Wine Club and Harvey Nichols. A locally sourced, gluten free, vegan friendly, low calorie white wine spritz with no added flavours or colouring. Find a sunny patch in your local park, crack open a can of LND SPRITZ and let us know what you think on Insta.
