Loveblock TEE - Erica & Kim Crawford have experimented using green tea as a natural antioxidant, instead of using sulphur as a traditional preservative used in winemaking. Green tea (Camellia sinensis), a registered wine additive, is added (5mg/l) at each stage of the winemaking process that sees the wine exposed to oxygen, including harvest, crush, float, racking after ferment, filtration and bottling.
They tested and tasted a bottle over a five-day period, leaving it on the benchtop. The wine did not oxidise and there does not appear to be obvious flavour transfer from the tea to the wine, keeping its profile varietal, showing softer flavours and a bit more spicy (saffron, verbena, mandarin zest, etc.), which I can confirm these are very positive features of the wine.
Loveblock TEE was previously named ORANGE, after its colour, due to running out of green tea in 2018, missed a dose at the bottling stage, oxidative pinking occurred. Since they have nailed it in 2019 with no oxidative pinking, they renamed the wine TEE, translates to 'tea' in Afrikaans, in a nod to Erica Crawford's heritage and the green tea.
