Austin’s Pinot Noir 2019

Tasting notes

APPEARANCE

Bright, mid to dark cherry red.

NOSE

A fragrant, pure fruited nose of red cherry with a hint of cedar and vanillin. This complexity is from careful, restrained use of French Oak that enhance and support the delicate fruit flavours that we always want to maintain.

PALATE

The palate is silky smooth with gentle round edges; with pops of lingering raspberry and plum and a slightly grainy texture. Just needs time in the bottle at the moment but should be singing loud and long by 2020.

• Geelong Wine Show – Gold

Food pairing

• Duck or salmon
• Vegetarian and mushroom-based dishes
• Prosciutto

The savoury, yet fruit-forward complexity of this wine makes it a versatile wine for matching with food. Pair with duck and salmon, or vegetarian dishes with mushrooms or truffles that bring out the wine’s earthy characters. If you’re after a light grazing board, nothing goes better with pinot noir than prosciutto.

Why Moorabool Valley pinot noir?

The Moorabool Valley produces wines of great power and concentration, with precise varietal definition and deft balance. The region produces a wine with the characteristics of a perfect pinot noir – strawberries when picked early, and cherry when picked ripe.

Continental in nature, we’re close to the Southern Ocean and dry in summer. The cool climate gives our wines full ripeness and beautiful finesse. Moorabool Valley has a rich history, with ancient volcanic soils containing a tough limestone and basalt base. This forms the sub-region’s unique terroir and provides the ideal free-draining soil for our grapevines.

The Austin’s Pinot Noir vineyard

Of the 150 acres planted at Austin’s, 90 acres are pinot noir—one of the bigger family-owned single plantings in Australia. Our plantings include seven different pinot noir clones, each bringing a unique flavour. When combined they produce a well-rounded wine with great depth of flavour, good structure and balance and aromatic richness.

Of the dozen pinot blocks available to choose from, we favour our Office and 4/5AB blocks which comprise the MV6 and D2V6 clones for our Austin’s Pinot. These clones have all the lovely pinot fruit flavours but also ripen later than the other six clones. These are crucial factors for developing better flavour definition, colour and tannin ripeness – which in turn ensure the quality of the wine.

The vines are planted north–south and trained vertically. The canopies are managed to provide enough light and air into the fruit zone to maximise vine quality and health.

Careful irrigation during the growing season ensures healthy vine growth and even ripening, which is the key to quality fruit.

The Austin’s vineyard

Austin’s has been located in the heart of the Moorabool Valley since 1990, a cool climate wine region steeped in rich history. Nestled between Geelong & Ballarat, the Moorabool Valley’s small, family run vineyards provide rich and intense low yield fruit, an ideal terroir for producing award-winning wines.

The Austin’s Estate is across 1,500 acres, with 150 under vine. The land boasts rich volcanic, limestone soils and a terrain that sits in a rain shadow.

Challenging weather conditions makes the Moorabool Valley one of the most complicated places to make wine, yet it produces some of the region’s best wines, notably, pinot noir.

Sitting on the ocean floor some 20,000 years ago, this land has been reclaimed by millennia of volcanic activity. Geelong’s Moorabool Valley sub-region has a tough limestone and basalt base. This gives the sub-region its unique terroir and provides the ideal free-draining soil for our grapevines.

Moorabool Valley’s cool climate is continental by nature but still moderated by its proximity to the ocean. This provides perfect conditions to grow world-class wines. All our vines are planted north–south and trained vertically. The canopies are managed to provide enough light and air into the fruit zone to maximise vine quality and health.

Careful irrigation during the growing season ensures healthy vine growth and even ripening which is the key to quality fruit.

Read more about the Moorabool Valley region here.

VINIFICATION

Fruit is picked cool at night and largely de-stemmed but not crushed to open fermenters for a warm soak before ferment kicks in with indigenous yeast. Fairly gentle maceration during ferment and pressed lightly after dryness. Settled a few days before racking to well seasoned, tight grain French oak barrels of which 40% are new. After malo-lactic fermentation in barrel, we wait awhile before adding SO2 for better colour stabilisation as SO2 tends to bleach colour. The wine stays in our cool temperature controlled cellar and regularly topped until the following January when we taste every barrel – looking for only the best barrels to be blended together. This year the clonal mix is 46% MV6, 28% 114 and 26% D2V6.

VINTAGE 2019

Cool to mild springtime conditions continued into the first weeks of summer, leading to fairly typical timing for flowering and fruit set to occur. Many warm summer nights and a dearth of rain saw our fruit ripen like crazy.

By mid February we were right into harvest mode and no matter how fast we harvested we barely kept pace with the rate of ripening. The resulting wines this year will certainly have a riper, more generous feel to them.

Shipping

We know you’d love to be drinking your wine as soon as possible. That’s why we will dispatch your order within 24 hours of your placing it.*

We are located in the Moorobool Valley, Victoria. We use either a courier, Fastway or Australia Post depending on the location. Orders are picked up our orders every afternoon at 3pm. Once fulfilled, you will receive an email confirming it’s dispatch with a tracking ID so you can follow it the entire journey. Buy this pinot noir online for fast dispatch and contactless delivery.

How much does it cost?

Free shipping AUS wide with any purchase over $99.

For any purchase under $99:

• VIC – $10
• Every other state $20

When will it arrive?

• Geelong – 1-2 Business Days
• Melbourne – 1-2 Business Days
• Rest of Victoria – 1-2 Business Days
• NSW/ACT – 2-3 Business Days
• SA – 2-3 Business Days
• TAS – 4-5 Business Days
• QLD – 5-7 Business Days
• WA – 7 Business Days
• NT – 7 Business Days

If you order hasn’t arrived within this time frame, please contact us so we can chase it up for you.

* In warmer months we will not dispatch orders on Friday to avoid heat issues with wine during transport. During sale times please allow 48 hours for dispatch. 24 hours refers to next business day.

Returns

We are very confident in the quality of our wines that if for any reason you feel the wine is not up to standard, follow these steps to enable a refund:

1. Notify us within 30 days of your delivery that you will like a refund. Any feedback during this time would be appreciated.
2. We’ll send you a return shipping label and you can book in a pick up address and time that suits you.
3. Upon inspection of the goods returned, if they are in the same condition as to how they were sent*, we will issue a refund to you.

*’Same condition to how they were sent’ simply means – no damaged labels, wine must have been stored in appropriate temperature conditions (not in a freezer or in direct sunlight or in damp conditions). The shipment is to be sent back in the original box and include the empty bottle of wine you have consumed to ensure the package is shipped safely.

If for some reason the wine was delivered to you damaged, simply take a photo of the stock and we will send a replacement.