A seriously sophisticated sparkling rosé that joins the ranks of top-notch Australian pink bubbles looking to challenge preconceptions about the category.
There’s an immediate and appealing savoury leesiness to the nose of this wine – something akin to a slice of toasted brioche lathered in butter and Vegemite. A panoply of red fruits – tart cranberry, pomegranate, sour morello cherries, and fresh, zippy raspberries – hides discreetly behind that initial savouriness, waiting patiently in the wings to bring some hedonism to the proceedings. The wine is driven down the palate by its brisk acidity, finishing with a note of bruised Granny Smith apple reminiscent of high-quality Loire chenin blanc or fresh, tangy manzanilla sherry. There’s a gentle whisper of phenolic bitterness on the finish, offering an intimation of a seriously impressive structure waiting to be discovered with each further sip. This is a wine that offers a heady, voluptuous mix of hedonism and intellectualism – like a sexy college professor on silk sheets.
There are many different ways to make sparkling wine. The most famous is the method widely associated with Champagne, where still wine is refermented in bottle with added sugar and yeast to create bubbles, then matured on the lees to create layers of flavour and textural detail. But pétillant naturel (pét-nat) or méthode ancestrale is an even older approach, with the primary ferment finishing in bottle to create the bubbles, with the result usually simpler and brighter, with less leesy complexity. Then there are more modern methods, like Charmat, where the fizz-producing ferment occurs in tank, then the wine is bottled cold to retain the bubbles, and the result is, well, bubbly wine, without any bottle-conditioned character.
With an explosion of interest over the last few decades, chardonnay is now the world’s most planted white grape. With its ability to grow in varied conditions and make everything from sparkling wine, to lean and mineral whites, to full-bodied textural expressions, it is perhaps no surprise to see Burgundy’s key white grape become so dominant.
Pinot noir is one of the wine world’s most revered grapes. Notoriously fickle to grow and make, it makes what many see as the pinnacle of red wine in France’s Burgundy, but it has also found many happy homes around the world, and none more so than in Australia across our cooler viticultural regions.
Melbourne is well served with top wine regions, with the Yarra, Mornington, Geelong and Macedon all about an hour from the city. All are cool climate, but Macedon takes the prize for being the coolest, with some touting it as the best territory for chardonnay and pinot noir in the country. Evidence of that potential, aside from some glittering exceptions, haven’t exactly been crowding wine store shelves over the years, but much has changed, and there’s a dynamic community ensuring that potential is being tapped in exciting ways.
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