What is dosage?

Dosage represents the final opportunity for a winemaker to influence the flavours and style of a traditional method wine, before corking. Typically this dosage addition (or liqueur d’expedition in French) includes a small quantity of sugar, used to highlight and enhance the fruit flavours and to round out the acidity often found in cooler climate wines. Subtle differences in the quantity of sugar used (the ‘rate of dosage’ ) can have a major impact on the perception of fruit character and nuance of those flavour notes.

To learn more about dosage, we invite you to step into the shoes of a winemaker and discover first-hand how the addition of sugar affects the style and structure of our sparkling wines on this fun and informative tour.

Book
English Wine Week Food and Wine Pairing Tour
Tour & Tasting

What's Included

Join us every summer Bank Holiday Monday for our limited run of Dosage Tastings & Tours. Combining two of our most popular tours, your experience will start with a walk through the vines to learn about our viticulture methods and take a closer look at how the grapes are progressing. Shortly after, you will step inside our RIBA nominated Winery to learn the process and care involved in making our high-quality wines.

Accompanied by an experienced guide you will then be given the opportunity to conduct your own dosage trial, adding different levels of sugar to a base wine to see how this affects the final style. The experience will conclude with a guided tasting of four of our Sussex wines.

Book
Wine tour and tasting

Details

  • Date: Monday 5th May, Monday 26th May & Monday 25th August (All Bank Holidays)
  • Times: 10:30 a.m. & 2:30 p.m.
  • Duration: 2 hour 30 minutes
  • Price: £40 per person
  • Location: Cellar Door, Rathfinny Wine Estate, BN26 5TU
Book
5th May | 26th May | 25th August

Book the Summer Dosage Tasting Experience

Mark holding a plain Rathfinny Reserved bottle up to the light

Learn More about Dosage

As a grower-producer, we want our sense of place to shine through. Low-dosage vintage wines are terroir-driven, speaking to the place and time they were made to showcase the purity of the fruit. In this article we explain the terminology of dosage in relation to the different styles of sparkling wines, from Brut to Demi-Sec.

Learn More

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