Minimal intervention winemaking: an interview with Will Rikard-Bell

Congratulations to our winemaker Will Rikard-Bell for his success at the 2025 Young Gun of Wine Awards. I recently sat down with Will and asked him about his approach to winemaking.

Bill: UK wine guru Jancis Robinson once said that over 90 per cent of the wine made in the world is industrial. What did she mean?

Will: The term ‘industrial’ is typically applied to wines that are made in large volumes, in a very mechanised way and as cost-effectively as possible. The fruit may come from multiple sites or multiple regions and the viticulture can also be very mechanised. These wines are basically made to a price point and the result is a highly standardised product that tastes much the same, year after year. It’s commodity wine – technically well made, pleasant, often good-value but ultimately lacking in soul.

Bill: What’s the process?

Will: The process starts in the vineyard where crops are maximised, whilst input costs minimised. The fruit is then machine-harvested. This method is not selective for quality! Every bunch, ripe or not, diseased or not, goes in. There are then many winemaking interventions that may happen after this point, but in general, sulphur will be added to the picking bins, which has the effect of inhibiting the natural yeast. Once it reaches the winery, fining agents may be then added to remove any bitter or undesirable phenolic components that are likely to have been picked up in the juice from the maceration in the bins. These agents will also remove many desirable characters in the juice, however.

The things that have been removed then need to be put back – commercial yeasts are added along with nutrients for the yeast. Some acid may be added here, perhaps enzymes for effective settling and juice maximisation and maybe some tannins too. The catalogue of additives available to an industrial winemaker is long! Finally, fining agents are added to the wines, perhaps a little bit of grape concentrate for sweetness, some stabilisation products and then filtration through a sterile membrane. All this renders the wines clear and bright but somewhat hollow.

Bill: What’s your winemaking philosophy?

Will: It’s very different to that! Minimal intervention is my mantra – it’s all about achieving more by doing less. I like to intervene as little as possible in the winemaking process, limiting additions, fining and filtration where I can.

High quality, hand-picked fruit is essential. You can’t make great wine without it! Next, a controlled, gentle extraction at the press is also very important. The healthy culture of yeasts that naturally occurs on the grapes is then allowed to kick off the ferment without inhibition by sulphur. There are plenty of nutrients available for the yeasts because I haven’t stripped them out. And there are fewer reductive characters in the ferment because the yeasts aren’t showing signs of stress at having to scavenge for nutrients.

I assess the wines carefully at every stage and make decisions based on flavour, rather than economic KPIs or a sales-based timeframe. I try to avoid picking up undesirable flavours from the very beginning, thus avoiding having to intervene later to remove them through fining.

I also like my wines to stabilise slowly and naturally rather than me actively or chemically intervening to have them do so. I can allow a wine to rest through a second, cool Orange winter and it will stabilise without me having to touch it. This process happens naturally.

If I can bottle a wine unfiltered, I do.

Bill: How does minimal intervention come through in the final wines?

Will: The aim is to produce wines that show personality and distinctiveness. Wine should speak of the vineyard from which the grapes came and express seasonal difference, vintage after vintage. Ultimately there’s more flavour left in the bottle when you intervene less and there’s a much better textural component too.

How a wine feels in your mouth is so important but often forgotten. I love to highlight a wine’s palate weight and texture – it really completes a wine and adds so much to its complexity and its ability to complement food. Such wines have a better capacity to age and develop in the bottle as well.