Ocean Eight Aylward Pinot Noir 2010
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Roast duck or quail with a supporting fruity sauce would be the best match with this fine wine.
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Wine & Spirits
After the Aylward family sold their Kooyong vineyard and winery in 2004, they set up Ocean Eight. Mike Aylward makes the wines from vineyards his family planted in the cool hills of Upper Shoreham. This is a salty, oceanic pinot, layered with notes of kirsch and kelp over crimson tannins. It starts off delicate, with a gentle texture, then the tannins seem to develop muscle and power with air. Decant it for tea-smoked duck.
Vineyard management is meticulous; yields are comparable to Grand Cru vineyards, and the winemaking is old school, unfined, unfiltered and gravity fed. The Chardonnay is pristine, bright, mineral, racy with a range of citrus and raw nuts; there is richness with tension in this wine. The Pinot is mouth filling, rustic, earthy with red cherries, rhubarb and brown spice. Ocean Eight wines have a modern new world intensity with a rustic, old world edge and complement the modern, high end cuisine that exciting chefs are championing in Australia and the USA.
Thin-skinned, finicky and temperamental, Pinot Noir is also one of the most rewarding grapes to grow and remains a labor of love for some of the greatest vignerons in Burgundy. Fairly adaptable but highly reflective of the environment in which it is grown, Pinot Noir prefers a cool climate and requires low yields to achieve high quality. Outside of France, outstanding examples come from in Oregon, California and throughout specific locations in wine-producing world. Somm Secret—André Tchelistcheff, California’s most influential post-Prohibition winemaker decidedly stayed away from the grape, claiming “God made Cabernet. The Devil made Pinot Noir.”
Extending into the sea from just south of the city of Melbourne to form Port Philip Bay in the southern state of Victoria, the Mornington Peninsula grape growing region naturally has a cool, maritime climate. A wide range of soils and topographic variations support a large diversity of wine styles within the small headland.