Prima Alba

2023

2024

77% Viognier 23% Marsanne

13.3% Alc.

Production: 3067 bottles (screw cap)

The hot and sunny 2024 season is reflected clearly in this wine. Pronounced and intense floral perfume, ripe stone fruit and sweet spice notes abound. This wine also displays a wonderful texture with balance and fresh acidity. This wine is bottled unfined and unfiltered and a harmless sediment may remain. 

This wine is inspired by the white wine blends of the Northern Rhone Valley in France. Originating in Switzerland, the Rhone river flows west towards Lyon before turning south down the Rhone Valley to the Mediterranean coast. The strong, cool wind known as the 'Mistral' blows down the Rhone Valley from the Alps and has a profound impact upon all of the agriculture in the valley, viticulture being no exception. This is the inspiration behind the name of the wine.

Perhaps the most famous of the Rhone white varieties is Viognier (pron. Vio-n-yay). The bronze tinted, thick skinned, hardy white grapes typically produce a medium weight, dry wine with characteristic bright floral and apricot notes. This is often blended with either or both of Marsanne and Roussane, to produce a vibrant, complex, floral wine, capable of being enjoyed in its youth as well as to be cellared and enjoyed with several years of bottle evolution.

The Vineyards:

The Viognier for the 2024 Mistral was sourced from two separate vineyards. The first is located in the Walcliffe sub-region of Margaret River, with a northerly exposure and around 4km from the Indian Ocean on the banks of the Margaret River itself. Sitting high on this hillside, the vines grow in gravelly, well drained soil and experience fantastic exposure to the warm summer sunshine and regular, cooling sea breezes.

The other portion of Viognier comes from the north of the Margaret River region, on the border between the Yallingup and Willyabrup sub-regions. This site is very exposed to both our regular winds and full summer sunshine, and the Viognier thrives in this site.

The Marsanne portion of the blend is grown at one of the most southerly vineyards in the Margaret River region located in the Karridale sub-region, some 4.5km West of the Indian Ocean and 6km North of the Southern Ocean.

The Season:

Winemaking:

All of the grapes for this wine were handpicked into small 8kg crates and immediately transported back to the winery where the whole bunches of grapes were placed gently into an old-school basket press to extract the juice. Whole-bunch basket pressing is the most gentle way to extract the juice from the fruit and is a process common to the world’s highest quality white wines. No additions, subtractions, fining or filtration of any sort was conducted on the juice.

From the press the juice was run directly into 3 and 4 year old French oak barriques for fermentation. The wine was fermented utilising the indigenous yeast which came in on the grape bunches from the vineyard. The wine fermented to absolute dryness and was left in contact with its fine lees for 4 months.

The 2023 Mistral spent 9 months in barrel before being racked via gravity to tank pre-bottling. This wine was bottled unfined and unfiltered and displays the possibility of producing elegant, pure, bright and clear wines, in this very natural way.

The Wine:

As always with these blends it is the nose that strikes you first. The typical lifted aromas of white flowers, apricot, and an array of sweet spices and perfume are even more abundant than usual for this wine - a direct reflection of the hot year. This mélange of intense summery aromas carries directly over to the palate where the typical interesting texture of this wine is also supercharged. Somehow this wine achieves a feeling of softness and textural amazingness whilst still being light a fresh! Enjoy it in its first 2-3 years to make the most of this veritable bazaar of exotic flavours and aromas or cellar for 5-10 years to witness the evolution to a more savoury and subdued delight.

Salutè

Robert Gherardi

2023

100% Chardonnay

13.6% Alc.

Production: 3123 bottles 

Three parcels of Chardonnay were hand harvested from the Wilyabrup and Karridale sub-regions for this wine. Each parcel was separately whole bunch basket pressed directly to barrel, wild fermented with indigenous yeast, underwent partial wild malolactic fermentation and batonnage to build complexity. The wine was aged for 10 months in French oak barriques, 18% of which were new. 

 This wine is a wonderful expression of the near perfect 2023 growing season. Great complexity and length yet precise and elegant t its core. This wine is bottled unfined and unfiltered and a harmelss sediment may remain. 

The Vineyards:

Three diverse and select parcels of Gin Gin clone Chardonnay combined to produce this wine. Gin Gin clone vines were used exclusively as I believe that this clone more so than any other expresses the exceptional and unique Margaret River and sub-regional terroir.

The first 2 plots of vines lie in the famed Wilyabrup sub-region. More examples of Margaret River’s most famous Chardonnays and Cabernets originate from fruit in this subregion than anywhere else in the district. Whilst only being around 150m apart, the two blocks behave drastically different and produce very different qualities in their fruit. 

The second plot of vines is in the far south sub-region of Karridale - the most southerly of Margaret River’s subregions. The vineyard is in close proximity to both the Indian and Southern Oceans leading to typically far lower growing season temperatures.

The Season:

The Winemaking:

All of the grapes for this wine were handpicked into small 8kg crates and immediately transported back to the winery where the whole bunches of grapes were placed gently into a traditional basket pressed to extract the juice. Whole-bunch basket pressing yields around 20+% less juice than a conventional airbag press, but the juice quality is second to none.

The juice was run into a mix of brand new and seasoned oak. 1 brand new French oak barrel was used, giving the wine a new oak percentage of 13%. The remainder of the barrels were a mix of 2 and 3 year old oak. The wine was fermented dry utilising the indigenous yeast which came in on the grape bunches from the vineyard.

Following alcoholic fermentation the wine was encouraged to undergo malolactic fermentation, a process whereby the malic acid naturally present in the grapes is converted into  the softer and more textural lactic acid. As with the alcoholic fermentation, this occurred through bacteria which were naturally present in the juice and winery environment. Following 100% completion of Malo the wine was sulphured and the wine racked off its heavy yeast lees. The wine has rested and developed in oak for 10 months during which time it underwent the process of bâtonnage (stirring of the yeast lees in the bottom of the barrel) for 4 months to encourage development of more complex, savoury aromas and flavours.

This wine was bottled unfined and unfiltered, with our aim being to showcase the amazing fruit which went into making it in the purest way possible.

Salutè

Robert Gherardi

2024

100% Nebbiolo

13.6% Alc.
Production: 2540 bottles

This wine is inspired by the early release Langhe Nebbiolo and Nebbiolo d’Alba styles of wine produced in the Barolo and Barbaresco zone of Italy. I have been living and working between Margaret River and this most famous of Italian fine wine regions since 2009. For this wine I wanted to make a great introduction to this esteemed grape variety which is totally foreign to most Australian consumers. As with all of my wines I sought to promote a purity of varietal expression and not take any aspect of the wine ‘too far’

The Wine:

A flawless pale garnet in colour, this wine displays all of the typical colour notes of the Italian Nebbiolo grape but from a hot vintage. Vibrant, bright and ripe red cherry notes, dense yet lifted fresh violet and dark rose petal perfume are all on display. As is typical from the Nebbiolo grape the wine has a fresh, high level of acidity and plenty of nutty, dusty, dry tannins. It is unashamedly a more simple expression of the Nebbiolo grape which will reward cellar for the short to medium term, but is tailor made to enjoy in its youth and always with food, in particular anything with protein. 

Salutè

Rob

Once again the Vino Rosso arrives to continue the humble story of this wine which is really to provide a bit of a guilty pleasure for you. Wonderful mixes of florals, fruit and spice but with a generous, soft structure and low tannins, this wine was made for enjoyment.

The Wine:

A unique blend of aromatic Petit Verdot, rich old vine Merlot and luscious, mouth filling Malbec, all from the Wilyabrup sub-region. All fruit was hand harvested, wild fermented with indigenous yeasts hand plunged and gently basket pressed to used French oak barrels in separate batches. The wine was aged for 21 months in barrel before bottling without fining or filtration. 

A round, soft and smooth wine with wonderful complexity and drinkability in youth that will reward cellaring for 5-10 years. A true guilty pleasure. 

Salutè

Robert Gherardi