Season
A very rewarding season in well managed vineyards. Spring rain gave us healthy canopies. Mild summer days with plentiful warmth and sunshine - thankfully without the heat spikes of warmer vintages - and an Indian summer that stretched into April were perfect for ripening late in the season. Fruit condition across our vineyard was excellent, and wine quality across the board is very high. Sexton Pinot Noir blocks cropped at < 2 t/acre.
Vinification
All our vineyards are hand picked and hand sorted. 10% of fruit for this wine was added to open vats as whole bunches. The remaining fruit was destemmed, but not crushed, and added to the base of whole bunches. The fruit was given a five-day cold soak with no cap work and then the vats were allowed to warm to ambient temperatures to initiate a wild fermentation. This took about 10 days to complete, during which time the vats were drained and returned by gravity with lots of aeration, but very little cap work was done. Ferment temperatures peaked at about 32 deg C. Once the ferments were dry and vats were emptied into an airbag press and pressed to tank. After a short settling, the wine was racked off gross lees to oak for malolactic fermentation. Approximately 5% of the wine was held cold post alcoholic fermentation to delay malolactic fermentation and integrate tannins. The barrels were racked twice during spring and summer. Light fining, no filtration, gravity bottled 225L barriques - all French Burgundy coopers 25% new oak, 25% 1 year old and 50% older. Time in oak - 10 months
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