Poppy the Frenchie wines are named after the family dog, Poppy. She is a beloved French Bulldog, who is bubbly, full of energy and as all dogs, loves a good pat!
Poppy grew up on the boutique family vineyard, visiting with Paggy and her Mum. She loves to seek shade in the vines, chase birds and during vintage receive many pats from the hand pickers, while she supervises the picking of the grapes.
Paggy is the winemaker of these small batch wines and also the daughter of the vineyard owner, Julie. Paggy and Julie love dry style French Rosé, so much so that Paggy requested to use the Grenache grapes on the vineyard to make a Rosé. Julie said she could however, their beloved Poppy had to be on the label, and so begun Poppy the Frenchie wines. Now with a Rosé and a Grenache.
The wines are all handpicked, with the vines also being hand pruned. Each barrel for the Grenache is chosen carefully with thought and consideration to taste. While with the Rosé, Paggy stood watching the grapes during skin contact, for the perfect blush colouring she desired. The Poppy the Frenchie Wines are also 100% vegan !
It was Paggy’s first time making a Rosé in 2017 and the wine made the Hot 100 Wines of SA!
VEGAN FRIENDLY
As you may have noticed our bottles have a 100% vegan logo, a question we get asked often is, ‘but wait, wine isn’t vegan?’ The answer is not all wine is vegan, so I thought I would share what about wine isn’t vegan, how our wine is vegan and why we decided to be a vegan wine.
What about wine isn’t vegan?
It is during the fining of the wine, the fining agents used are not all vegan friendly. When crushing grapes to make wine there is fragments of skin, sticks and leaves leftover, let’s call them ‘floaties’. To remove said floaties to make our rosé that perfect clear pink a fining agent is used. The fining agent has a positive charge and forms an ionic bond with the particles, gathering more and more until they combine and become so big they fall to the bottom of the tank. The wine is then ‘racked’, which means the liquid is siphoned away from the combined floaties.
How is the Poppy the Frenchie wine vegan?
Our wines are vegan because instead of using a fining agent that contains animal products such as albumen (egg wines), casein (milk), isinglass (fish) or gelatine (various animals), we use Vegecoll which is a product that consists of the protein from potatoes! This product is slightly more expensive but is kinder to all our furry friends. Whilst also being kinder on the wine, it removes the harsh astringency (dryness and puckering sensation) that occurs during grape skin contact, softening the tannins to make a nice, smooth flavour more than other fining agents.
Why did we decide to be a vegan wine?
Being that Mum’s dog Poppy is on the label and she is our little brand ambassador for our wines, we thought that is was only fitting that our wines are made through a process where no animals have been harmed. Making this decision was easy as it not only increases the quality of the wine but also has a positive effect on the animal world.
