Sweet Pea McLaren Vale Moscato bottle image
Sweet Pea McLaren Vale Moscato bottle image

Sweet Pea McLaren Vale Moscato 2016

Tasting Notes

Sweet Pea is a crowd pleaser and very versatile too. Good as a heart starter in the morning, lovely with scrambled eggs and smoked salmon for brunch, versatile as a mixer with gin, ice soda water and limes later on in the afternoon, is there nothing she can’t do? The nose shows grapey characters (to be expected I guess), with exotic hints of Turkish delight, spice and maybe pink bubble gum. The finish although sweet, has a wonderful savoury finish which balances out all of the flavours.

We had a very dry spring leading up to vintage 2016 and it was windy, too. We expect windy conditions in Willunga, but this was pretty intense. October and December were both pretty warm, whereas November was mild. Very healthy crops were recorded across all varieties in McLaren Vale. We had a huge downpour at the end of January a few days before the whites were due to be picked; this kind of weather event tends to give Joch a sense of tightening around the left chest area, neck and sometimes down the arm. However this 50mm downpour succeeded in refreshing the vines, giving us a few more days before picking and bringing the lawns back from the brink. February was mild with cool nights and March provided pretty good picking conditions, give or take a few warm days.

Our Moscato is made using Muscat à Petit Grains, which is a member of the Muscat family of grape – this variety may very well be the point from which the modern wine grape evolved. It is planted everywhere in Europe and used to make all kinds of different wine styles – white, red, fortified, sparkling and sweet. It is the ISA Brown of the grape world (look it up if that makes no sense). For us it makes a delicious, light and sweet-ish and slightly sparkling (‘frizzante’) pinkish wine. We pick the grapes and allow them to spend a small amount of time ‘on skins’ so we get the lovely pink colour. We then make the wine like a white wine; press off skins and ferment. The wine is chilled to stop fermented and bottled with a little bit of fizz.

Technical Details

Picking Date: 10th February 2016

Alc/Vol: 7%

Bottling Date: 15th March 2016