Adelaide Hills 13.0% Screwcap $10 Source: Winery
$150/case from the website and a very nifty wine it is. At the price, I guess its only real competition is the De Bortoli Windy Peak in Pinot terms. Both have a decent amount of Pinosity to them, but they taste completely different.
This one is about the fruit and to a lesser extent, the structure. Oak is minimal, leading to a very refreshing, cruisy style. Fragrant and on the dark side colour wise. Black cherries (some macerated) with raspberries, plums and cranberry tartness. It’s spicy in a very positive sense with a little forest floor/mulch. The acid is there, but more of a surprise is the soft assertiveness of the sappy tannin. The weight and sap are really what identifies this as Pinot, should that matter to you. It walks the line between sweetness and sour/savoury profiles.
I was recently at a lunch where Martin Shaw or Michael Smith (I forget which) said that the first challenge when making Pinot was to get it tasting like Pinot. I can see his point but it nags at me, as do all arguments based on varietal correctness. I thought most of Australia was heading towards a spirit of regionalism? Is Pinot that deserving of being judged differently? I think the grape just sits on a pedestal, and is surrounded by a lot of guff…which only got worse after “Sideways”. I’m not a huge fan of Adelaide Hills Pinot and this does taste like it’s from the Adelaide Hills.
In the end, I think this wine is well worth checking out. I will be enjoying my remaining bottles as light, dry Adelaide Hills reds but that doesn’t mean I’m suggesting the wine isn’t varietal. It’s just that, at the price, I don’t care.
Winery Website- http://www.mikepresswines.com.au/
Just had a bottle of this over a few days. At the end, it was heavy & chocolatey. Like a grenache in fact. The South Australianness beating out the pinotness in the end.