Pinot Noir
Vintages 2009, 2010, 2012
We make only small quantities each year, and all that we do in the vineyard and in the winery is designed to make the best wine that we can that (a) let's you know it's from the Adelaide Hills and (b) is enjoyable to drink with food and friends (which, let's face it, is what it is all about).
Give or take, this is how we go about things. We identify the few best rows in the vineyard. We reduce the yields as low as we can go and do what we can during the growing season to make sure we grow quality fruit with intensity. We hand pick. Once at the winery, we destem most of the grapes to a small open fermenter, but we like to retain some whole bunches for added tannins and complexity. The wine is pressed and racked to French oak barriques, across a variety of ages and toastings, and then racked from barrel to barrel. Our wine then spends about nine months in barrel and is bottled without fining.
The 2009 was our first offering under our own label. It displayed fruit in the raspberry/cherry spectrum, some oak influence, with good straw and strawberry fruit on palate and with a gentle, rich profile. It will drink now but will also do well with a little more time in bottle.
Our 2010 is more fruit forward, and is crisp and fresh and less tannic, but still with good length. It is a very approachable wine, drinking now but will also improve in the bottle.
2011 was a poor growing year in the region, and we decided to leave well enough alone.
2012 displays a distinctively varietal nose, with strawberry, beetroot and hints of dried herbs. It has a soft and gentle palate but, as all good pinot should be, is mouth-filling with a gentle edge of late palate tannin. It will drink well now but with its excellent Adelaide Hills acidity the wine will, with time, develop the ‘forest floor’ notes that makes pinot with age such a delicious drink.
Chardonnay
Vintages 2009, 2010, 2012
We make our Chardonnay with the same attention to detail as our Pinot Noir. We choose the very best grapes from the best sites on the vineyard, we hand-pick them and hand-sort them at the winery.
Our first offering was in 2009. This was a very soft, full wine, showing all the characteristics of a traditional chardonnay.
Our 2010 chardonnay was a cleaner, crisper wine but still showed some complexity -- struck match, yeasty/ funky flavours with a lovely finish,
We begged off in 2011 in light of the poor growing year.
For 2012, we reduced the yields significantly, then selected the best grapes from the best sites. We whole-bunch pressed and fermented in the barrel. The wine was then racked off the lees to tank, heat and cold stabilised and gently filtered prior to bottling. We have made what we believe will be a fine example of an Adelaide Hills chardonnay. It has a lovely straw colour, and throws a complex but youthful nose, with notes of nectarine from the fruit and a blend of creamy, yeasty, nutty depth from maturation on lees in fine French oak. Fresh, zesty, with a fine finish.
