Mt Difficulty Ghost Town Bendigo Pinot Noir 2018

Mt Difficulty Ghost Town Bendigo Pinot Noir 2018French oak Crunchy cherry Dried herbs Fine tannins Supple dark crunchy red berry and cherry berry notes lead into the palate. Savoury earthy elements appear mid palate energetic and lively as it moves. The wine finishes with tension between the fine structural tannins, acidity dried herbs and crunchy cherry flavours. Mt Difficulty Ghost Town Pinot Noir will improve for 10 15 years given optimal cellaring conditions. Mt Difficulty Single Vineyard wines

• French oak
• Crunchy cherry
• Dried herbs
• Fine tannins

Supple dark crunchy red berry and cherry berry notes lead into the palate. Savoury earthy elements appear mid palate energetic and lively as it moves. The wine finishes with tension between the fine structural tannins, acidity dried herbs and crunchy cherry flavours. Mt Difficulty Ghost Town Pinot Noir will improve for 10-15 years given optimal cellaring conditions.

Mt Difficulty Single Vineyard wines are a celebration of time and place. Located in Bendigo on Chinaman's Terrace, once home to over 2000 Chinese miners during the 1860s and 70s, Ghost Town vineyard comprises of 13ha planted in mature Pinot Noir, Pinot Gris and Syrah. Planted in 2002, Ghost Town is at a high elevation rising from 340m to 382m. It potentially sees slightly warmer temperatures than Bannockburn during the peak of the ripening period, although harvest can be a week or so later than our Bannockburn vineyards due to this elevation. Ghost Towns unique personality, together with minimal winemaking intervention, has resulted in a Pinot Noir that displays a savoury texture and spice detail.

One for the record books, and a vintage of two halves. There was exceptional warmth from September through to late January, before cooling off through February and Autumn. With the warm start we got underway early; this warm settled weather continued through flowering and fruit set. The potential crop was well set, yet small as a result of the cool December in 2016. The vineyards really started to dry out through December and January, with irrigation struggling. With the arrival of February, temperatures plummeted to below average and rainfall was well above average. These cool and wetter-than-average conditions persisted right through harvest. Disease pressure remained low, even with the elevated rainfall, through the finish of the season. The cool, late Summer / Autumn period enabled berry ripening through a cooler period providing ripe fresh characters.

We harvested the Pinot Noir over three picks from the 7th to the 19th March; in excellent condition. There is a plethora of different clones 114, 777, Abel, 667, 115, all planted on the vineyard and also all represented in this wine. Where we were able to, we co-fermented all these clonal lots to enhance early integration. The majority of the fruit was destemmed, with around 18% of the fruit retained as whole clusters to help build structural intensity and help reflect the unique characteristics of the site. The wine underwent a 7 day cold soak and was hand plunged once daily; this was followed by a 6-8 day natural fermentation with temperature peaking at 29°C during which time the ferment was plunged once daily. In total, the wine stayed on skins for 20 days prior to pressing, overnight settling and then went to barrel for 12 months. The wine went through malolactic fermentation in the spring, was racked to tank the following autumn and bottled, filtered but unfined, in July.