From the Winery

This is only the second Pinot Noir to be released under our Ladies who Shoot their Lunch label since our flagship Pinot project began in the vineyard back in 2006. The vintage of 2012 was the first in which we achieved the level of quality demanded for inclusion in the Ladies wine range. The warm and dry vintage of 2013 also proved to be one that provided ideal conditions for producing Pinot Noir with wonderfully intense colour and flavour.

For the past eight years we’ve focused on nurturing outstanding Pinot Noir by putting serious efforts into canopy management. We’re working with clones used by renowned Australia producers in more established Pinot regions that are proven to deliver excellence. We’ve also trained our Pinot Noir vines to have smaller, more open canopies and lower yields all of which helps us to produce Pinot Noir with dense colour, intense flavour and that enigmatic character that typifies this variety. With Ladies Pinot Noir, the aim of the game is to create a wine with layers of complexity and the personality to complement wild meat. We achieved this by sourcing fruit across a flavour spectrum (picked from different sites in our vineyard) and funking it up with wild fermentation and a variety of delicious French oak. Wild yeast fermentation adds a layer of complexity because it often produces wines that are more textural than those made using cultured yeast. However, we did ferment the balance of this wine using cultured yeast, a Burgundy isolate, selected by our winemakers that contributed its own unique attributes to build layers of flavour in this wine.

When it came to oak, we used larger puncheons (rather than 300 litre hogheads) and a variety of new and older oak. It’s worth noting that size and age all influence and imprint on the wine in different ways. Small and new oak barrels impart more of an impression on the wine compared to larger and older ones we chose to use. Bringing these barrels together helped us build layers of complexity within the wine. This wine was bottled in September 2014. We decided to bottle it unfiltered to achieve the perfect tannin structure, uninterrupted by filtering. While it’s still early days for Pinot Noir in the Strathbogie Ranges, this wine gives us real confidence for the potential of this variety in our region.

The fruit for this wine was harvested during the day on 1 and 8 March 2013. The majority of fruit was hand-picked to ensure gentle handling and that only the best bunches were selected. This wine was fermented in small (9 tonne) stainless steel open top fermenters and hand plunged. This technique allowed us to retain primary fruit flavours and close control of the extraction process; something which was important in building the desired colour and structure of this wine.

This wine was fermented at around 30˚Celsius with 75 per cent wild fermented by natural and ambient yeasts present on the fruit and in the winery. This wine was matured for twelve months using a combination new (40%), one year old and two year old (60%) French oak puncheons (500 litre).