2017 Punt Road Gamay

Punt Road

Australia / Yarra Valley / Punt Road

Second time round for us with Gamay, and we’ve learnt a lot in 12 months. First, Gamay will set a big crop, with big bunches and big berries. It needs to be thinned hard; 30% went on the ground. In the winery, bunches and bags were key. With those big berries, and in a benevolent year like ‘17, Gamay would have a tendency to be one-dimensional. It seems our house style will be a 50:50 blend of 100% whole bunch ferments, and 100% cab mac, berry ferments in our goon bags. This lifted funk and spice. And then, oak. The time in (old) oak is crucial. The wine fills out and sweetens. So we added two months in oak this year. Still left it on lees, unsulphured for this time. It’s clear that this will be a variety that suits the warmer slopes of our Napoleone vineyard. The vineyard manager loves it, so do we, and the wine makes itself. No finings, minimal filtration on bottling. Got a small SO2 addition a week ago just before bottling. - Tim Shand, Punt Road

August, 2018

Campbell Mattinson

Halliday Wine Companion 2019

93 points

50% whole berry and 50% whole bunch. Alive with spice, fruit, texture and more savoury inputs than you could poke a stick at. It works. Roasted nuts, cherries, cranberries, twigs; it's all happening in the glass. It keeps you interested and thoroughly satisfies.

December, 2017

Gary Walsh

The Wine Front

93 points

Suspect there’s a great future for Gamay in the Yarra Valley.
Ripe cherry and spice, meat rolled in dried herb, fleshy full and juicy, a bit of fresh strawberry tang and a dusting of fine powdery tannin. Bursts with dark cherry flavour on its long finish. A wonderful thing to drink. Bravo Timbo.

June, 2018

Huon Hooke

Gourmet Traveller WINE

Gamay is enjoying a revival in parts of Australia. The colour is quite a deep, glowing red/purple and it smells invitingly of both red and darker cherries with a foresty overtone. Medium-bodied and nicely balanced, it has plenty of bright, uncomplicated fruit flavour and drinks well already, thanks to light, soft tannins. There is an evident kinship to its relative Pinot Noir and it has enough structure to keep for a few years, and possibly even reward short-term cellaring.

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About Punt Road

Tim Shand heads a dynamic, progressive young winemaking team at this James Halliday five star-rated winery. Punt Road is a standard-bearer for wines of character, drinkability and a clear, proud Yarra Valley stamp. It has history on its side and cards stacked in its favour for a very bright future. The property was founded on site of the St. Huberts Vineyard planted in the 1860s by Paul and Hubert de Castella - some of the first vines in the Yarra Valley and one of the cornerstones of Australian fine-wine tradition. Punt Road owners the Napoleone family took advantage of a tremendous head start when they planted vineyards here in the 1980s. All these years later, Tim and the team bring restless perfectionism to this intimately understood site and its mature vines. The Punt Road wines have never been better.

About

Tim came to the Yarra Valley with vintages under his belt at Domaine Dujac in Burgundy and Château Margaux in Bordeaux, as well as stints in Chianti, Oregon and Chile. Since then he had a hand in some of the region’s headline-grabbing wines of recent times during his tenure at Giant Steps before taking the helm at Punt Road in 2014. Tim and the team are making most of the freedom to push boundaries while making the most of the excellent fruit the Yarra Valley gives rise to.