2022 'Tolone' White
The wine seems very refined. It is a dainty 9% alcohol, but you wouldn’t know it, It has incredible structure and presence. It is an elegant and haunting thing of beauty (I don’t say such things about my own wines lightly). It has so much vitality and freshness and is a very individual wine in its own right. There is nothing added to the wine at any stage of the process (including oak). It is a stunningly pure expression of site place and time. The “tolone’ block is the other small vineyard o...Read More...
The wine seems very refined. It is a dainty 9% alcohol, but you wouldn’t know it, It has incredible structure and presence. It is an elegant and haunting thing of beauty (I don’t say such things about my own wines lightly). It has so much vitality and freshness and is a very individual wine in its own right. There is nothing added to the wine at any stage of the process (including oak). It is a stunningly pure expression of site place and time.
The “tolone’ block is the other small vineyard on our farm and is planted mainly to Riesling. It has some Chardonnay interplanted within it and these plants are only evident later in the season when the slightly different shape of the leaves is recognisable to the trained eye. The vines are an average age of 27 years old. The aim is to do as little as possible and let the fruit be what it wants to be. There were 48 hours of skin contact with a very light maceration. The reason for this is that I believe the skins of any fruit hold some of the information and story of the place, the soils, and the weather that it is exposed to. As for the winemaking, after the cold soak as whole bunches it was pressed directly to a small stainless tank for a long cool ferment. There it sat for 8 months on full solids without being disturbed at all.
It was then bottled by hand directly from that tank (without racking or moving the tank). It has spent a further 18 months in bottle since composing itself. - Dane Johns, Winemaker.