Nomads Garden Pinot Blanc 2021

Handmade – Hand Picked – Basket Pressed – Wild Yeast Ferment

No Acid Added – Barrel Aged on Lees – 36 Hours on Skins

Vineyard ~ Murtagh Vineyard, King Valley

Sourced from a well known and well run vineyard perched on the side of a mountain well up from the valley floor and thus cooler, vital for maintaining natural acidity. This vineyard predominantly grows better known varieties, when we discovered there were a few rows of the little known Pinot Blanc we thought what the heck and took 1.5 tonnes to experiment with.

As with all wines released under the Nomads Garden range input from us in the winery was kept to an absolute minimum. Instead careful attention was paid to working closely with Pat the grower and ensuring the grapes were picked at exactly the right moment to ensure the natural pH and the flavours were just right.

Once handpicked and in the winery one half of the fruit was crushed and then gently whole bunch pressed in our wooden basket press directly to seasoned 5 year old French Oak. The second half was destemmed and crushed then allowed to remain on skins for 36 hours at which point fermentation had already commenced, then pressed to 5 year old oak. Oak of this age will impart very little, if any oak characteristics instead we believe they are the best vessel for wines to ferment and age in. Oak is a natural product that allows the wines breath and evolve with time, something not possible with tanks. Once the juice was in barrel it was protected with CO2 until the natural yeast indigenous to vineyard took hold and begun the fermentation process, when using natural yeast we expect fermentation to begin with 3-5 days of crushing. Ferments were temperature controlled in our barrel room to stay at approximately 24 degrees Celsius to retain aromatics. Once fermentation was complete the Pinot Blanc was allowed 12 months to rest in barrel on its lees (lees are the solids that drop and of the wine post fermentation) to create texture. The wines are then lightly filtered and bottled, before been given at least 3 months post bottling to settle