Size & Type
Other
$119
The No.2 is Seduction in a bottle. It’s not your average Shiraz Viognier, beyond the Marsanne and Mataro it’s got a few secret ingredients in it that add that extra bit of intrigue! The incredibly supply texture is matched by lucious fruit, spice and perfume that is simple stated intoxicating.
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I had the great pleasure of working with Doc for just over 4 years. I had been in search of a winery that was pushing the boundaries of excellence and was fortunate enough to be introduced to Yarra Yering. Tasting the wines reminded me of some of the great old Australian and European wines Dad had cracked over time. Working with the man was a mind explosion.
The detail, thoughtful consideration of finer elements of the wine was evident from the first day we met. He was always ahead of his time, always in the pursuit of extra yumminess. In 1996 texture was a major focus, 10 years later the better producers in the industry were thinking texture.
You can read about my 1st vintage with Yarra Yering in 1996 in the Wine Bites Magazine. I’ll get to sharing more about my 2nd stint at YY from 2000-2004 soon. Stay tuned!
For Doc the worst fault a wine could have was not a technical one, it was for the wine to be boring! Most would agree you could never accuse a YY wine of being boring!
From the Winery:
Varietals: 95% Shiraz, 3% Mataro, 1% Viognier, 1% Marsanne.
Vines: Original 1969 plantings of Shiraz and Marsanne with additional Shiraz planted across the 1990’s, Mataro & Viognier drawn from vines planted from 1984 to 1995.
Making: Fruit was hand-picked, bunch sorted and destemmed directly to the Yarra Yering half-tonne open-fermenters. As much whole berry as possible is retained to encourage perfume. Some stalks were added back to some of the fermenters in order to contribute structure and aroma.A portion of fermenters had frozen Viognier skins added to the bottom, some with Marsanne skins. The wine was aged for 12 months in French oak barriques, 30% new before blending and bottling.
Having worked at Yarra Yering with Doc, over 4 years, and devoured pretty much every wine made at YY, I’ve got a soft spot for the place.
You can read about my time at Yarra Yering in the Wine Bites Mag!
Talk about a radical shift in thinking, pushing boundaries and certainly, making wine, with a single-minded goal of achieving excellence.
It’s incredibly hard to express, how, my 1st vintage at YY impacted my winemaking. I hope I can do it justice. There are moments in your life when you’re exposed to something that completely contradicts your thinking at that time. Disruptive influences that make you sit back and question your approach. Yarra Yering and Doc represented such a moment, a pivotal point in my wine career. Doc was an incredibly generous, gentleman. The first wine Doc gave me was a 1983 Auguste Clape Cornas, he’d paid $13 a bottle for a case of this incredible Shiraz, today it retails for closer to $200.
It wasn’t that I hadn’t tried a veritable bounty of European wine before from Bordeaux to Beaujolais, it was that I was drinking the wine and seeing qualities that could be replicated in Australia. I’m not suggesting making boring copies of European wines, but, that the Great European wines have a balance, textures, freshness of flavours, complexity, all packaged in a complete refined elegant package that was possible to achieve in our own backyard. It is these qualities, along with the careful ageing of the wine pre-bottling that are the hallmarks of Yarra Yering.
Mac Forbes map is a first cut at defining Sub-Regions for the Yarra Valley. Yarra Yering is North fo the G in Gruyere just on before the crossroad. You can see the contours of the Warramate ranges South of the road.
The 2017 vintage was near perfect in the Yarra Valley. A long even growing and ripening season saw wines of great definition, line, length, and, sophistication produced across all varieties. Phenological (flavour and tannin) ripeness matched sugar ripeness beautifully. The best 2017’s will be long-live, and, build on the incredible backbone they already have in place.
Sarah Crowe, winemaker, says that the summer was temperate and without any heat-spikes, and the leisurely harvest lasted 10 weeks.
The fruit was near-perfect and there was no mad rush to pick anything, they could wait for perfection.
The vintage and the wines remind her of what the Valley did 25 years ago, lacy wines with freshness, brightness and crunch, shy when young, but wines that flesh out slowly with time.
When asked about the 2017’s and if they are, the best ever? She says “Perhaps yes, with longevity in mind. These are not a flashy as the 2015’s (another near-perfect vintage) but they are beautiful and elegant, and they will fill out and mature slowly, and last a very long time.”
Follows Bailey Carrodus's method of co-fermenting small amounts of viognier, marsanne adding floral notes, and mataro adding spice. It's another exquisite wine from '17, capturing all the senses immediately you assess the bouquet and palate. It's only just into medium-bodied territory, but it's mouthwatering in its intensity, red fruits flying high like a gaudy scarlet kite.
Where in the world does the magic happen?
Yarra Yering Vineyards, Briarty Road, Gruyere, Victoria, Australia
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