Morning Bride Rosé 2021
Tasting Notes
Our aim is to make a lovely pale pink, dry crisp Rosé with nice acidity and exceedingly drinkable. With a nose of strawberries and watermelon rind, the Morning Bride ticks off all of the above, no worries. Serve chilled as an aperitif or drink with charcuterie and mild cheeses, as well as traditional southern French onion tart, or pissaladière. Google the recipe and try it.
Vintage
Good winter and early spring rains were followed by a generally dry and mild growing season. After the leaner vintages of 2019 and 2020 it was nice to see a return to long term average crop levels. We had a slow and steady ripening period without any excessive heat spikes which has resulted in super varietal fruit intensity and balanced natural acidity.
A Mary Poppins kind of vintage; practically perfect! Joch is always loathe to comment favourably about vintage quality, for fear of jinxing things – he can be superstitious like that, but by the end of harvest, the word ‘exceptional’ was heard to come out of his mouth.
Winemaking
The ‘Morning Bride’ is made to be a Rosé - we picked some of our Chanticleer Shiraz early, especially to make this wine. Grapes were de-stemmed and pressed with no skin contact at all (apart from travel time between vineyard and winery). There was a cool, temperature-controlled fermentation in stainless steel tanks and once the grapes were through malolactic fermentation the wine was filtered and then went straight to bottle. The trick with this wine is not to leave it for too long on skins when it has been picked otherwise the colour gets too dark… Are you listening Joch???
Other Vintages
Technical Details
Picking Date: 16th February 2021
Alc/Vol: 12.5%
Bottling Date: 29th April 2021