2018 Straw’s Lane (Method Champenoise) Sparkling Rosé
36 BOTTLES AVAILABLE
 
An extremely limited release years in the making.
 
While working in the vineyards of Chablis in 2012 I was lucky enough to spend some incredibly inspiring time visiting the cellars of Champagne’s grower producers. None spoke to me more than a remarkable evening spent with Jerome Prevost of La Closerie, whose wines remain my most favourite expressions of grower Champagne. The sense that Champagne could and maybe should be produced as a wine first and sparkling second has resonated since. Picking ripe, extracting carefully in the press, slow ageing in barrel on lees native to the wine itself - and then crucially, a very minimal time on triage lees, so as to not dilute the character of the vineyard.
 
Fully ripe (for sparkling) Pinot Noir bunches were harvested late in the season from the 30 year old and 700m ASL Straw’s Lane Vineyard, perched high on Mount Macedon and looking back towards the Cobaw Ranges. Soil consists of a fine basalt loam owing to its volcanic past.
 
Whole bunches were lightly foot trodden and remained to soak for four days to gently extract both colour and flavour, then basket pressed to two old Burgundy barrels for fermentation and maturation.
 
The wine remained in barrel, un-topped (flor layers came and went) until December 2021.
 
Disgorging took place six months post-secondary fermentation (mid-2022) in bottle and the wine is zero dosage.
 
Vivid pale pink in the glass, a sherried top note owing to the flor ageing precedes a nose of rose garden, red apple skin and small red berries. Time in the glass reveals spice and vanilla bean complexity.
 
The palate is long and powerful, with a refreshing small fine bead (the wine was also bottled with minimal pressure in mind). Talc-like phenolics from skins and stems provided a bracing structure to the concentrated red berry fruit, finishing clean and dry.
 
Please decant well prior to serving.