Nose
Chardonnay is a fresh, lively wine. On the nose it shows primary fruit aromas of peach, melon, pineapple, passionfruit and grapefruit. It also displays the traditional complexity of chardonnay, although the fruit richness has tended to push this into the background slightly more than usual.
Palate
However, there is integrated, smoky oak as well as doughy yeast autolysis characters and hints of caramel overtones from the malolactic fermentation. One observation of the Moss Wood team is that this is a wine which needs some breathing time. Soon after opening the nose can be dominated somewhat by the wild yeast fermentation characters, but these soften after about 15-30 minutes. These characters follow through on the palate. The fruit flavours give a sweet, mouth-filling texture, which is smooth, rich and long, all underpinned by crisp acidity and some oak and tannin notes on the finish.
Growing Conditions
In February 2000, Moss Wood vineyard manager, Matt Bowden, was a happy man. The growing season for the 2000 vintage had been a beauty – not even the birds were a problem. There were some hot days during December but January and February were mild. A small amount of rain in late January came soon enough to refresh the vines but on the other hand, not late enough to cause any damage to the fruit. The chardonnay crop was in very good order indeed.
Picking started on 1st March and ran for three days. All came in according to plan although, at 14° Beaume, the two main blocks were riper than the expected 13.5°. Technically speaking, it should have started two or three days earlier but then nobody is perfect.
Bottling
10/2/2001
Winemaking
As usual, the processing was divided into two parts. The ‘clonal chardonnay’ was picked separately and whole bunch pressed: the juice was then put straight into barrel for fermentation, allowing for inoculation by wild yeast culture. This slightly aggressive technique is used because these clones, selected from the University of California at Davis, are very high yielding and tend to lack good fruit flavour. In fact, around Margaret River they are disparagingly referred to as the ‘Trebbiano clones’ because of their uncanny resemblance to this high yielding, neutral grape variety. To gain more complexity, the Moss Wood crew retain more solids than usual in the juice and carry out the entire fermentation in wood.
The main batch, made using the Mendoza clone, is much more flavoursome and is treated more carefully to retain and enhance its good fruit depth. In this instance, the bunches were de-stemmed, the grapes pumped through the must chiller (which is cooled to 8° Celsius) and then added to the press. Two lots of juice result: the free-run (the juice which drains off before pressing takes place) and the pressings (that which is extracted by the pressing process). These are combined, settled for 48 hours at 12° Celsius and then pumped to a fermentation tank.
