wine
‘Sticky’ Late Harvest Riesling 375ml
Production:
Harvested: 3rd of April 2008.
Sugar at Harvest: 16.2 Baume
Residual Sugar: 106.5 grams per litre
Single vineyard wine.
Fruit sourced from Mick Hearnden, Stockwell.
Dry grown
1.2 tonne to the acre.
Total production 300 x 12 x 375ml cases, 150 cases released in Australia.
Colour:
rich straw gold with still a hint of green clinging to the edges.
Nose:
Lovely ripe Nashi pear with hints of cinnamon and vanilla pie crust complexity over echoes of limes and lemon.
The mouth feel (being Riesling) has a natural acidity that belies the sweetness of the wine and gives a balance often lacking in the more over the top stickies.
Palate:
Rich ripe raisoned apple pear over hints of lemon zest and bready yeast characters, further enhanced by the barrel fermentation and extended (five days) skin contact. This gives a firm and cleansing finish that goes on and on.
Purchase:
6 x 375ml bottle case.
Philosophy:
I haven’t come across too many people who don’t enjoy a good bottle of sticky if the time is right. Between you and me, it often seems that this ‘right time’ is generally glass in hand- bottle open! I am no different. For me, my epiphany sticky was a 2006 Peter Lehmann ‘Beerenauslese’ Botrytis Riesling. The acid backbone and purity of fruit struck such a chord with me that I guess I have always wanted to replicate in some way my memory of this wine. Over the years since I have drunk and enjoyed many great ‘Stickies’ from Australia, France and the America’s. I keep coming back to the Riesling based wines though, you just can’t beat that balance.
In 2008 the opportunity popped up to make a Sticky of my own. The “Big Heat” heat wave of late March torched a mate’s Barossa Riesling patch in a really unique way. Because the heat was so sudden, vicious and unrelenting, the vines were completely shut down by the heat and didn’t have a chance to hunt anything back from the grapes for their own selfish needs… like survival. The result after 16 days of hell was bunches that on the outside were snap dehydrated in a way that retained most of the natural acidity even though sugar levels were through the roof. If you turned these bunches over, the fruit inside (protected by the canopy shade, and the sacrificial berries on the outside) were still vibrantly fresh and crisp. No botrytis but perfect for a super rich and delicious late harvest style!
We picked the fruit and I left it on skins for 7 days then basket pressed to tank for a long, very cold fermentation. The heavy pressings I barrel fermented in a well seasoned ex Chardonnay French oak Barrique. Once the wine had reached 10% alcohol (leaving a generous six degrees baume or 106 g/l residual sugar) I stopped the ferment. The wine then spent about a month on Yeast lees, naturally settling before bottling in 375 ml format under screwcap.
The chances of ever replicating this wine again are pretty slim… well I for one am not in a hurry to see a repeat of the conditions that forged it. I’ll keep my ears and eyes open however because chance and opportunity make bloody good wine!
