Nose
The nose is lively and aromatic with pretty floral notes of violet and roses along with some deeper, more ruggedly mineral and dry toned characters of bitter chocolate and tar.
Palate
This wine has a distinguished character, like you would expect from a Nebbiolo. However we have aimed to capture a freshness, which showcases bright fruit amongst the nervy acidity and slightly restrained, but ever so present balanced tannins.
Growing Conditions
Lucky for us, the 2021 vintage came in behind a ripper growing season the previous year. The mild spring in 2020 made for great condition and a solid foundation for vintage 2021. In general, budburst and flowering was fairly normal, yields were slightly better than 2020 but still lower than average on the whole, and Marri tree blossom was around, which helped reduce the bird pressure. The unlucky part of vintage 2021 was the weather systems that resulted from La Niña and labour shortages due to Covid.
Weatherwise, the long-lasting cyclone season in the north west translated to increased rainfall in the south west – specifically in November, then again in February through to April. Fortunately, December and January were dry and warmer than normal months which allowed for some early ripening which raised hopes of an ‘easy’ vintage – that was until a combination of tropical lows and came in in late January and soaked the south west in February. As far as cyclones go, there were four names that will be embedded in the minds of viticulturalists – Joshua, Lucas, Marian and Seroja. Joshua started the rain dance in late January and Seroja finished the dance party in April.
The rainfall however was a pro and a con, it soaked deep into the soils and was great for later ripening varietals – particularly in our dry grown vineyards, however the warm weather combined with high humidity increased the risk of botrytis disease pressure. Fortunately, our model of spending more time in the vineyard than the winery paid off, with the extra attention given to canopy structure early on in the vintage. The effort put to shoot thinning, fruit dropping and leaf plucking was rewarded in good clean fruit.
Our general take on vintage 2021 was that although it was challenging and exhausting in the vineyards, the effort paid off with clean fruit harvested. The Nebbiolo fruit is sourced from a single vineyard in the Wilyabrup sub region of Margaret River. All of the fruit was hand harvested in March.
Harvest
The grapes for our Nebbiolo are sourced from a single vineyard positioned in the warmer and drier northern Margaret River sub-region of Wilyabrup, where the vines consistently achieve ripe, flavoursome and high-quality fruit from growers Gianfranco and Francesca, who planted these Nebbiolo vines in 2004. The fruit was carefully hand harvested in March with family over two days.
Winemaking
The grapes were destemmed and gently crushed into an open top stainless steel fermenter where they stayed on skins for 18 days with gentle hand plunging twice daily before being pressed to old French Oak hogshead barrels. The wine was then matured in barrel for ten months before being prepared for bottling. The wine was then further matured in bottle for six months prior to release.
Appearance
In a glass the wine presents lightly like the colour reflection off a red brick wall.
