| 2013 Pinot Noir | |
 | Size: 750ml Tasting NotesA nose of berry jam, dark chocolate and leather leads to a well-structured palate featuring
cherry, raspberry, black pepper and spice with notes of forest floor. Ratings91 (Halliday) Food MatchingThink meaty casseroles, roast lamb or any sort of poultry. The 2013 Pinot is especially divine with duck; the cherry and spice go beautifully with a pepper crusted seared duck breast, and duck liver paté works well. Forest floor and cherries make it a brilliant match to a Christmas turkey with cranberry sauce, or a hearty cassoulet. Game – particularly venison, is a lovely match and any pork dish – although my favourite would be roast pork belly with duck fat potatoes and lots of crackling. A dark, slow cooked braise such as lamb shanks or even beef cheeks will do well. Let us know any suggestions or good matches you come across and we will happily add them to our list of “must tries”. ViticultureWe have three different Pinot Noir clones on the Top Note vineyard. The G8V3 clone forms the backbone of our wine giving good fruit notes of cherry and berry jam whilst our two "problem children" clones of MV6 and D4V2 produce the excellent nose, spice and fabulous colour that has convinced us to cherish these blocks despite the difficulty in managing them and their low yield. 2013 was a very dry growing season with extreme heat in January and mid-February bringing on sudden ripening for our neighbours in the vale. We experienced a similar spike in sugar with the Pinot clones but were fortunate, being further behind the ripening process, to then have a number of weeks for the rest of the flavour profile to build and balance the sugar. We picked the two smaller blocks – the MV6 and the D4V2 on the 27th February overnight (after a nervous day with some of the first rain we had seen all month.) We gave the larger block G8V3 another week or so to reach Greg Clack’s preferred level of ripeness and picked this clone from 3am until 9am on the 12th March. Picking the blocks separately proved a lucky necessity and gave Greg great options to develop the wines separately and make intelligent blending choices further along the winemaking trail. We will continue to pick these blocks separately from now on. WinemakingThe grapes were destemmed but not crushed to open fermenters where they were held for 2 days before inoculation with gentle plunging. 5% of the juice was saignée'd to improve the skin to juice ratio and increase concentration. The juice was inoculated with a Burgundian isolate yeast strain and allowed to ferment naturally; no cooling was used and peak ferment temperature hit 28°C. It was pumped over during peak ferment to maximise extraction of colour and tannin. It was pressed after 8 days on skins and transferred immediately to 100% French oak barriques (40% new). The wine was matured for 10 months in oak then transferred to stainless tanks for clarification prior to bottling in July 2014. Winemaker: Greg Clack Wine AnalysisTA: 6.4g/L |