Sweet Pea McLaren Vale Moscato 2021
Tasting Notes
Sweet Pea is so pretty (floral) on the nose, and savoury on the finish, with that sweet bit in the middle. It is versatile, too; a wine to go with brunch (smoked salmon and scrambled eggs), a cocktail base (mix with gin, soda, lime, ice and mint) or good with a strawberry based dessert. You try!
Vintage
Good winter and early spring rains were followed by a generally dry and mild growing season. After the leaner vintages of 2019 and 2020 it was nice to see a return to long term average crop levels. We had a slow and steady ripening period without any excessive heat spikes which has resulted in super varietal fruit intensity and balanced natural acidity.
A Mary Poppins kind of vintage; practically perfect! Joch is always loathe to comment favourably about vintage quality, for fear of jinxing things – he can be superstitious like that, but by the end of harvest, the word ‘exceptional’ was heard to come out of his mouth.
Winemaking
I believe that this wine is South Australia’s (if not Australia’s) only single vineyard, organically grown Moscato! It is made using ‘Red Fronti’, which is the McLaren Vale vernacular for Muscat à Petits Grains (red frontignac). This grape variety is common throughout central and eastern Europe, as well as here in Australia. Even though it is a red grape, it is used to make sweet or dry white wines. We use it to make our slightly sweet, gently ‘frizzante’ pink ‘Moscato’ wine. We pick the grapes and allow a couple of hours of skin contact before pressing off and fermenting, which lets us get the gentle pink colour. We stop fermentation when the wine is about 7% alcohol.
Other Vintages
Technical Details
Picking Date: 19th February 2021
Alc/Vol: 7%
Bottling Date: 3rd May 2021