Forget-me-not Sauvignon Blanc Semillon 2014
Tasting Notes
This classic Bordeaux blend white has a delicate lemon/ lantana nose with a hint of fruit tingles, as well as fresh straw. On the palate it is clean and lemony, just the way we like it. This is such a terrific blend of varieties, and so versatile – for the quick pre-pranidal drink, to being matched with seafood dishes, oysters, etc, so on and so forth. Those Bordelais have had some good ideas over the years, haven’t they?
Vintage
Vintage 2014 was a season of extremes for us all in McLaren Vale. We had great winter rains which gave us a full soil moisture profile in time for a dry and windy spring. They don’t call it windy Willunga for nothing. If we’d had a set of wind chimes on the property, we would have heard them all day and night from September to January. We had a series of very hot days in January, followed by about 45mm of rain over a 48 period in early February which slowed ripening of our red grapes right down. We had picked all of our white grapes prior to the rain ‘event’ and so we had a decent break between whites and reds, like the good old days. There was no splitting of any of the grapes left on the vine after the rain, mercifully, either. Joch’s analysis of 2014 is that it was a gentleman’s vintage – everything came in slowly and in order.
Winemaking
Delicacy in winemaking is the key to this wine, to maintain the lovely yet fragile characters from both varieties, and to ensure we don’t lose them between picking and getting the wine into bottle. Semillon is picked a little riper than the Sauvignon Blanc, but both varieties are made reductively, which means we do our utmost to protect the grapes and ferment from air so as not to lose character or flavour. We cold ferment the grapes in stainless steel (no oak used to make ‘Forget-me-not’ at all) and when ready, we bottle it immediately
Other Vintages
Technical Details
Picking Date: Sauvignon Blanc; 6th, 10th, 17th and 18th February 2014. Semillon, the 11th February 2014
Alc/Vol: 13.0%
Bottling Date: 1st Dec 2014