Moondarra Conception Pinot Noir 2018

Gippsland, Victoria 

Our early vintages were made with Bruce Dowding and David Creed. Bruce worked many vintages with Jacques Frederic Mugnier in Musigny, where Guy Accad was consulting. David was dux in his year at Roseworthy and is perhaps the greatest winemaking intellect I have encountered.Accad’s legacy is our extended pre-ferment cold-maceration and our vigorous pigeage by foot throughout fermentation, three to four times daily. This brings colour and extract from the skins.David is in draining our wines to barrel at dryness without settling, retaining all the yeast lees in the wine in barrel. This brings a chocolate, mocha flavour to the mid-palate of the wine.We pick small buckets of fruit about a week before harvest and foot-crush them. They are left in various parts of the vineyard to ferment spontaneously. If these ferments are sound, we use them to inoculate the Pinot Noir harvested a week later. All will be different, so we try and use as many as possible across the various ferments. If any of the ferments become excessively volatile, I’ll sprinkle a very small amount of commercial yeast on top to continue the ferment and clean it up.I’m comfortable with low levels of volatility and I use two different yeast: RC212 and BM45. Both produce high levels of glycerol, adding ‘slipperiness’ or ‘silkiness’ to the wine. I attribute ‘wild ferment’ character not to ‘wild’ or indigenous yeast, rather to a long and slow fermentation. Over a long fermentation, the yeast finds the ethanol being produced becomes toxic; and they produce mucyl polyglycerides and glycyl polysaccharides as a defensive response. These complex flavours are most appealing and add volume and complexity to the finished wine.We do not inoculate for malolactic fermentation, rather allow it to proceed naturally in barrel. If this process is unhurried it can produce characteristics we taste as ‘hung game’: cadavericine and putrescine.The wines are not racked until bottling and we resist adding sulphur until this stage, usually about 20 ppm. The wines are not filtered, retaining a rich texture as well as aromatic lift. I feel filtering ‘beats up’ aromatics and subtlety of the wine.To me, these techniques enable funkosité, our trademark Moondarra, style.The fruit is all hand-picked and processed on-site at Moondarra. Winemaking varies slightly for each of the Pinot’s, influenced by the differences in terroir, to highlight these nuances in flavour.All the wines are grown on deep, volcanic soils. These are free-draining and rich in minerals, bringing robust, ferrous flavour to our Pinot Noirs.

2017 Conception Pinot Noir 750ml 
This part of the vineyard faces the North East morning sun. It is also sheltered from the stress of the South West winds. This aspect brings ‘prettiness’ to the wine. Average bunch weights are in the order of 50 grams, with tiny berries. Flavours are very much Cerise and Fraise. The grapes are crushed into small open fermenters, with about a third put in on top as whole bunches. At harvest, the stems are quite dry, they bring an ‘amaro’, bittersweet tannin, a little like dried orange peel. As soon as the wine is dry it is drained to barriques. For ‘Conception’ they are mostly new Tronçais, coopered by Madame Remond, MTL or ‘medium toast’.