Winemaker Notes
Blend: 56% Chardonnay, 44% Pinot Noir
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
From a cool vintage in the cool northeastern corner of Tasmania, this wine carries its coastal freshness through tense flavors of grapefruit pith and lemon, all of it laced with salinity. Think daisies growing in stone and you’ll be close to the flavor of fruit grown in the basalt soils of Pipers River. It’s crunchy chardonnay and pinot noir transformed into some serious sparkling wine. Serve it with smoked whitefish mousse.
Representing the topmost expression of a Champagne house, a vintage Champagne is one made from the produce of a single, superior harvest year. Vintage Champagnes account for a mere 5% of total Champagne production and are produced about three times in a decade. Champagne is typically made as a blend of multiple years in order to preserve the house style; these will have non-vintage, or simply, NV on the label. The term, "vintage," as it applies to all wine, simply means a single harvest year.
Directly south of the city of Melbourne and the Mornington Peninsula wine region, the cool-climate island of Tasmania has earned an honorable reputation as the country’s finest producer of Sparkling Wine. Naturally the region also excels in top quality still wines from Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Riesling, all distinguished because of a high natural acidity. Most of the Tasmania vineyards cluster around the eastern side of the island from north to south.