Nose
A bright combination of strawberries, strawberry jam, cherry and spice, enhanced by an ethereal rose-like lift. It is also complex, with soft oak, earthy and tarry notes.
Palate
The feel is rich and bright; medium to full body combined with bright strawberry and cherry flavours and then a long finish of earthy notes and well balanced tannins.
Growing Conditions
As we look back at the 2010 vintage, it’s hard not to be nostalgic. There haven’t been many better years than this and it is gradually becoming recognised as a Margaret River classic. Like others of the same ilk, 1980, 1985, 1990, 1995 1996, 2001 and 2005, it was equally good for whites and reds. This reflects all the positives of the growing season. Not only did we get good rainfall, it came during periods when it did least harm. There was consistent warmth but very little extreme heat and so the vines ripened steadily and retained bright and complex fruit aromas.
With so many things in its favour, it comes as no surprise that crops were above average as well. This is not a concern with a variety like Cabernet Sauvignon which, in our view, makes some of its best wine in these years, with better tannin balance, in particular. On the other hand, Pinot Noir is more sensitive to high yield and can produce wines with reduced concentration, resulting in lighter colour and softer tannin. In a variety where these characteristics are already “lighter” this may not be a good thing and requires careful attention to detail.
There are several techniques for managing yields but at Moss Wood, we have focused mainly on two – bunch thinning and “saignee”, which is the French term for draining juice off the skins to improve colour and flavour.
The both techniques involve a combination of science and guess work. With the former, we sample the vineyard to estimate the number of bunches each vine has and then use our historical data to estimate yield based on the likely range of bunch weights. If the potential yield is deemed too high, then we carry out a “green harvest” by going through the vineyard and dropping a calculated number of bunches from each vine. This has to be done at a point in the season where the vines won’t respond by increasing the size of the berries. Overall, the lack of accuracy means this technique is something of a blunt object – a bit like using a large sledge hammer to drive in a tack. This being the case, we combine it with the second technique of juice removal.
Once the fruit is picked and sitting in the tanks, we know exactly what our quantities are and can work out with some precision what volume of juice we would prefer. We know from our history what the best ratio of skins to juice is and we attempt to match that. It would be foolish to think of this as scientific, because we can’t know beforehand what the actual levels of all the key components are and it follows that we can only guess the likely impact of increased concentration will have.
