Spice Market

2022

2022 PRIMA ALBA

Sauvignon Blanc (100%)

Prima Alba, meaning ‘First Sunrise’ in Italian. This wine marks a new beginning for Mr Barval. A re-imagining of a Margaret River white varietal classic of Sauvignon Blanc, but not as you would know it. Hand harvested fruit, gentle whole bunch pressing, wild fermented in old French oak barriques with 5 months on light yeast lees.

A bone dry, medium/light weight wine displaying crisp lime acidity, abundant tropical fruit notes, with mouth coating texture. This new wine for us treads an intriguing line between light delicacy and profound complexity. This wine is bottled unfined and unfiltered and a harmless sediment may remain.

2022

73% Viognier 27% Marsanne

13.4% Alc.

Production: 3147 bottles (screw cap)

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 2022 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:

The summer of 2022 was the hottest on record for the Margaret River region. Not just hot, we had an extreme heatwave beginning on the 27th of December and stretching into February. Whilst this lead to some of the varieties in the area struggling, it proved to be just the tonic for these two hardy, Rhone Valley white varietals. Since beginning to make this blend back in our first Mr Barval vintage of 2015 I have never seen the vines looking so vibrant. The notoriously fickle Marsanne looked especially amazing and for the first time ever produced a big crop of fruit. 

I had a feeling that these vines would produce a great wine from early on in the summer when the hot period begun and this was only reinforced with every passing day of fermentation and every monthly tasting throughout the up until bottling.

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 2022 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 melange 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

2022

100% Chardonnay

13.1% Alc.

Production: 1687 bottles 

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 2021/22 Season:

The Spring of 2021 was late to arrive with lots of cold days and nights, and plenty of Spring rain. Unfortunately the flowering period of Chardonnay was heavily effected by these spring rains with around a 30% reduction in typical crop levels. Then came the heatwave of late December and January. This was extreme heat for Margaret River and lead to a further 30% reduction in crops as the developing berries were literally cooked and within a handful of days were dry, desiccated husks. 

Although we ended up harvesting around 60% less grapes than usual the quality of the portion we did harvest was very high and has lead to a different Chardonnay, reflective of the hot season, but still unmistakably a Mr Barval classic.

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.

The Wine:

The extremely hot season is reflected strongly in this wine, something which we embrace with our traditional winemaking techniques not adjusting, fining nor filtering. The 2022 Chardonnay displays typical hot year aromas and flavours of ripe yellow peach, nectarine and quince with a sweet orange oil layer also prevalent. On the palate the wine has a lower acidity and slightly higher alcohol than typical for us, all of which is a direct reflection of the hot season and which add to an increased mouthfeel, texture and overall weight.  For such a young wine from such a hot year, the balance right across the palate and the length of the palate are impressive. This wine is drinking well upon release but will really hit it straps in another year or two in bottle and will reward extended cellaring of 8 + years.

Salutè

Robert Gherardi

2022

100% Nebbiolo

12.9% Alc.
Production: 1953 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 Season:

As with the Chardonnay of 2022, the current vintage of Nebbiolo really suffered from the long, cold, wet Spring, storms during flowering, and the extreme heat of the Summer of 2022. All of this added up to a drastically reduced crop. The quality however was very high.

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:

The nose of this wine displays a dense mix of ripe red, black and purple berry fruit with an added layer of fresh petals. On the palate this is easily our richest wine, with mouth-coating texture. Although full bodied, deep and rich, the wine has an awesomely long palate length and fresh finish brought about by the significant proportion of Petit Verdot and the higher acidity which it brings to the blend. This wine will evolve well in bottle over 5-10 years but is also a guilty drinking pleasure right now.

Salutè

Robert Gherardi