Pinot Noir 2008

Vintage

Isabel Wines

Tasting Note

A feminine, delicate and ‘curvey’ voluptuous wine. Spicy nose, and perfumed Pinot Noir, rich and elegant with geranium and rose petals. A dark ruby colour, with creamy caramel chocolate nose and concentrated fruit flavours of plum jam and ripe blueberries, blackberries with a subtle spiciness, pepper and smoke notes. A luscious length palate, medium bodied with an outstanding depth of fruit, soft texture.

Drinking well now, I believe this wine has the structure to become a long-lived wine.

Accolade

“An attractively perfumed and complex bouquet displaying red cherry, spice and mushroom characters with a hint of cedary oak notes. The palate is generous and well textured with fine tannins providing a pleasant dry finish. A beautifully matured Pinot showing lovely fruit intensity as well as savoury notes”
Mike Matthews, Magics Wine Guide, May 2011

Food Match

Great with a venison stew or a braised lamb!

Buy This Wine

Isabel Vineyard Pinot Noir 2008

Further Vintage Reports & Tasting notes

Vineyard
Isabel Estate
Block 2 Rows 63 – 142
Block 4 Rows 154 – 256
Brooks Rows 1 – 25

Variety
Pinot Noir
Clones: DRC ABLE, UCD 5, UCD 6, CIVC 375, AM 10/5 Dijon 113, 114, 115, 667, 777

Harvest Date
3rd – 21st April 2008

Bottling Date
15th September 2009

The 2007/08 growth season could be described as a ‘bloody good’ vintage. Even bud burst, cool, dry flowering allowing us to use a little moisture stress to keep the berry weights down. This resulted in some Pinot Noir clones, such as the Bernard 667 & 777, having berries in the teeny-weeny category.

The block was extensively shoot thinned in the early season. Very specific and early leaf plucking was carried out, once again, by a team of midgets who were under the threat of ‘very nasty things’ if they removed the wrong leaves. Fruit exposure was increased by this last operation and nicely built the level of tannin pre-cursors in the fruit. The last few weeks warmed up wonderfully and brought the fruit into great balance for the main harvest in the first week of April.

- Mike Tiller

Extended cold soaked for 8 days after all fruit was de-stemmed and placed into specially designed open top stainless steel fermentation tanks, separated by clones and fruit character. It was followed by a long fermentation and reached a peak temperature of almost 35 degrees C.  The fruit was then punched down to extract colour and flavours from the skins.

Press and free run wine was separated by batch and racked by gravity into the cellar. Again, separated by batch where wine spent 12 months in a mix of different aged barrels. The barrels were topped every two weeks. The mixture of different aged barrels and cooperage gave more options for the final wine assembly.

- Patricia Miranda