It's widely believed that the first impression is most likely to be the correct one, especially when tasting wine. That may help to explain my spice metaphor in the photo here. I sat down to review this wine on Wednesday, not quite sure how I wanted to describe it for the blog.
The first thing that struck me was the exotic spiciness, something I haven't seen so prominently before. In an instant, I was transported to the spice market on the shore of the Bosphorus in Istanbul.
The more I tasted the wine, the more the spice became a fixed part of the profile--never quite as remarkable as on my first acquaintance but there nevertheless. Other features revealed themselves as the wine opened up--silkiness, the jube-like fruit characters of the MV6 clone, the smoky waft of new French barrels for example--but the spice remained.
Go with the first impression is the message I have learned from too many embarrasing blind tasting experiences. Waiting and trying to analyse too deeply can get you into trouble. So spiciness is the word on this one.
It's released now and available on the website. The really good news is that we have made a reasonable volume, thanks to the weather gods of 2010.
We are getting an early start to pruning this year. The vines are ready and I have a suspicion that, despite the cold weather, we will see an early spring. That means the vines will be translocating the sap early as they come out of dormancy and it's not a good idea to be cutting into the canes at this time.
You can see from the photos that we use the cane pruning method.
This means that we select two or three healhy canes and the remainder of the summer's growth is pruned away. It's there in the vine row behind this pruned vine (it's a Cabernet Franc). These retained canes provide the framework for next year's growth. Each bud on the cane will grow into a shoot and each of these shoots will have one or two bunches of grapes. This is the way we control the crop level--on this vine for example, we have left 6-8 buds per cane. Once the vine is growing, we will come through and remove any shoots we think are weak or poorly positioned to further reduce the crop.
But we haven't finished yet--these canes need to be tied down along the trellis wire to spread the new growth and allow sunlight and air to penetrate, avoiding a dense, compacted canopy.
We have completed this procedure in the Pinot Noir as you can see here:
Now we are ready for spring. That's if it stops raining.
Continuing the metaphorical approach to wine description, here's my take on the 2011 Pinot Noir. The thing you need to remember about 2011 is that it could have all gone badly wrong at any moment as the photograph above illustrates.
We did survive but it was a wild ride.
There were times when I thought we were about to be hammered, and I am sure the gentleman in the photo felt the same way as he was riding this monster.
But in the end, there was beauty and truth. Those of you who surf may understand exactly what I mean and those who don't may prefer to wait until they can taste the wine. It's turning out better than we might have hoped as we stared at another rainy, cold day in February. In fact, it's turning out like a respectable Burgundy. It's got the forest-floor characters, it's got the slightly funky and leafy notes and it's got the very-difficult-to describe-accurately dusty/earthy thing. We will follow its progress with great interest, given how much of ourselves we invested in it.
By the way, the 2010 is about to be released. It will be available on the website from July 1st.
I have been tasting the 2011 Chardonnay from barrels. It's been difficult to pin down accurate tasting comments on this elusive wine so I thought I would do it in pictorial form--with a piece of Strathbogie Ranges granite.
If you could imagine tasting this rock, you would have some idea of how the wine tastes. It's flinty and full of minerality but that's only half the story. There is a lively thread of citrus running through the wine.
This adds a freshness and fruit definition. It's important not to be frightened of the rocky nature of the wine at this point in its development. Barrel maturation will add its own characters over the next six months and the result will be an excellent Chardonnay in the Squitchy Lane tradition--low alcohol, refreshing and complex.
