Wine Pale Gold 2009
- Customer pickup,
- Courier
- In detail
- Type of wineFortified wine
| Viticultural & vinification notes | Winemakers comments | |||
| Vintage conditions |
A relatively warm vintage with very hot conditions just prior to harvest | Colour
Nose Palate |
Pale Straw
Complex aroma that is distinctly grapey with quince, cut grass, pear and orange rind aromatics. An intense sweet luscious wine that displays pear, white peach and grapefruit flavours. The palate is long and rich with a good acid structure, well integrated spirit and a nectarine after taste. |
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| Vineyard | Dunsborough and Karridale Hand pruned to rods Hand picked |
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| Grape variety |
Chardonnay, Semillon, Verdelho, Sauvignon blanc | |||
| Maturation | Wholly fermented in stainless steel and matured in bottle under cork. Store upright for transport but lay it down in the cellar. | |||
| Wine analysis |
Alc/Vol: 15.3 Acidity: 5.3 g/l pH: 3.20 Residual sugar:145g/l |
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Verdelho is a Portuguese grape from the Island of Madeira used with another grape variety called Sercial to produce the Madeira wines. In Madeira, heating of the must to promote evaporation is an age old practice used to concentrate the sugars. Our dry climate achieves the same result with probably less damage to the fruit flavours. Madeira was a wine much favoured on the East Coast of America centuries ago when it was often shipped with a cargo of African slaves, but little of it finds its way to Australian shores today.
This wine style is similar but less alcoholic than White Port. Our preference is for less alcohol because we think it tastes better. Part of the secret of wines of this type is that they retain more of the flavour molecules that are bound to sugar than a dry wine. This accounts for the depth of flavour and fruitiness of a good fortified.
The name Pale Gold is inspired by the experience of reading Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' to our children. It is the sort of wine that Badger might have kept in his pantry to welcome lost friends who stumbled on his door in the depths of winter, scared witless by the creatures of the Wild Wood.