Description
Vintage Notes: 2022 was a high quality but low yielding season in the Yarra Valley. A very cool, wet and stormy spring resulted in some challenging conditions around flowering and hence very poor fruit set. The season proceeded to dry out into December, with a dry and warm Christmas period. This exacerbated the already small bunch weights, leading to bunches that weighed up to 40% lower than normal years. The mild summer meant long, slow ripening and flavour concentration throughout summer, with some well-placed rain in January refreshing the vineyards at just the right time. The strong canopies and low fruit load meant we sailed neatly into picking with very little disease or weather pressure affecting our picking decisions. The grapes from 2022 came off the vine with lovely concentration and flavour with great natural acidity and tannin.
Vinification: All Giant Steps fruit is 100% hand-picked. Our grapes are then chilled overnight before processing. The Pinot is either fermented as 100% whole bunches or 100% destemmed with whole berries. The whole bunch treatments have a warm start to fermentation, with minimal mixing throughout the start of fermentation to promote carbonic maceration. These ferments are then left for up to 21 days on skins before pressing. The destemmed and whole berry batches are held cold at 4℃ for four days before the ferment is allowed to heat up and start fermentation naturally with indigenous yeasts. Cold soaked for 3 days, then allowed to warm in small open fermenters in order to kick start wild fermentation. Parcels are matured in French oak (10% new, 90% older) for eight months. Blended in October and then bottled by gravity without fining or filtration in November.
FOOD:
- Turmeric and garlic roasted chicken with couscous.
- Mushroom Risotto with roasted enoki.
- BBQ Quail with five spice, fried spring onion and garlic flakes.
