Winemaker Notes
Ruby red with strawberry, raspberry and red and black cherry fruit. Also hints of star anise, cloves and soy. On the palate the wine shows complex savoury fruit and spice and is long, textural and juicy.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Perfumed and savory, with aromas of dark cherries, forest floor, dried strawberries, blackberry bush and cassia bark. The palate is medium-bodied with fine tannins and a plush, textural mouthfeel. Such a lovely pinot with tension and grit. Drink or hold.
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Australian Wine Companion
Fruit off the Robinson, McIntyre and Garden vineyards, the split not known; barrel fermented and aged in French oak for 10 months, 22% new. Lots of intrigue from tangy, juicy acidity to the smoky, reductive, charcuterie notes alongside cherry fruit, Moroccan mint, an array of fresh herbs and brown spices. Lots of fruit sweetness and spicy oak across the fuller-bodied palate with poached rhubarb and chinotto. This has lots of appeal and is, of course, better with food.
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.