Mt Difficulty Ghost Town Bendigo Pinot Noir 2017

Mt Difficulty Ghost Town Bendigo Pinot Noir 2017Dark cherry Savoury herb Vibrant acidity Fine tannins "From a cool but generally excellent vintage. Intense, elegant Pinot Noir with violet, dark cherry and berry and savoury, herb flavours supported by deliciously vibrant acidity which helps drive a lengthy finish. A high energy wine with obvious potential" Bob Campbell, Master of Wine, Real Review, Apr 2021 Supple dark crunchy red berry and cherry berry notes lead into the palate. Savoury earthy

• Dark cherry
• Savoury herb
• Vibrant acidity
• Fine tannins

"From a cool but generally excellent vintage. Intense, elegant Pinot Noir with violet, dark cherry and berry and savoury, herb flavours supported by deliciously vibrant acidity which helps drive a lengthy finish. A high-energy wine with obvious potential" Bob Campbell, Master of Wine, Real Review, Apr 2021

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.

A very interesting season - overall we ended up with an average amount of heat even though the season had a distinctly cool bend to it. A very warm wet spring kicked off the growing season in style with very early bud-burst. Just as we were entering into flowering, the weather deteriorated with very cool weather being the norm right through late December. This impacted on flowering with lower than average yields.

We harvested the Pinot Noir over four picks from the 16th to the 21st April; in excellent condition. There is a plethora of different clones 114, 777, Abel, 5, 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 15% 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 8-9 daycold soak and was hand plunged once daily; this was followed by a 5-6 day natural fermentation with temperature peaking at 30°C during which time the ferment was plunged once daily. In total, the wine stayed on skins for 25 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.