Gold and Trophy – Wine Show of Western Australia
Gold – Margaret River Wine Show
2016 was pretty idyllic for rosé production. Light, fine flavours became present in the fruit at low sugar levels allowing expressive, generous wines with the alcohol nicely in check. This is a 100% single-site wine from the Lentondelle Vineyard in the Carbanup subregion of Margaret River. It’s a flat, warm site with fertile, red sandy soils. The fruit was picked by hand on 3rd March at what would generally be considered perfect Chardonnay numbers.
It was whole bunch-pressed directly to old oak for fermentation as per high-end chardonnay production. The juice was fractionated into free-run and pressings but ultimately all of the fractions were used in the final blend. Fermentation was wild and no additions were made to this wine at all. After 10 weeks unsulphured in oak on gross lees, the wine was emptied from barrel, then settled, filtered, sulphured and bottled.
We’re extremely happy with the resulting wine. The texture and phenolic structure are highlights for us. We feel that, although extremely different from Bandol, this may be very ageworthy in a similar vein. That said, drink it on a boat, wearing white. Baumé: 12.1; Alcohol: 12%; pH: 3.2; Total acidity: 8g/L - Julian Langworthy