Nose
A complex nose of bright strawberries and dark cherry flavours across the mid and back palate. It has fresh acidity and firm tannins though these are well-balanced by fruit and spicy, charry oak flavours and its weight.
Palate
Peter Forrestal’s tasting notes describe the wine as having pretty, lifted aromatics and rich, concentrated and complex, mulberry, black cherry flavours with some gamey, stalky notes; powerful, long and balanced.
Growing Conditions
The 2005 growing season in Margaret River was great and so we have high hopes for the pinot noir.
The vineyard management program applied the usual rigour so necessary with this variety. Yields were very good and so aggressive that bunch thinning was necessary to get the crop down to the required level of between 2 and 3 tonnes per acre and hand leaf removal maximised fruit exposure.
Bottling
2/11/2006
Winemaking
The winemaking approach followed traditional practice at Moss Wood. The grapes were destemmed into open tanks, with 5% of bunches being included uncrushed. Longterm readers of the newsletter would know that 15 years ago 50% of bunches were uncrushed. The consequent characters derived from stalks are no longer considered a desirable character either in Burgundy or Margaret River central – except to provide some subliminal background complexity. The wine was aged for 20 months in new (33%) and used oak before being racked into tank where it was sterile filtered (but not fined) before bottling on 3rd November 2006.
Aging
we think the 2005 will age quite comfortably to 20 years of age for those who are really keen on cellaring.
Appearance
Deep ruby colour.
