Eastern Peake - 2023 Mount Block Pinot Noir

This block of pinot noir was established in 1994, I still remember sitting with dad on the old very noisy Leyand 245 tractor working up the soil in the autumn of 1993 as young little tacker being fascinated with the process, the aroma of the newly ploughed soil, the hidden artefacts beneath the surface coming to light from settlers of the past. I was very intrigued to see how these vines would grow in this new patch of dirt that was slightly different to the other plantings, the block sits at the back of the property with a wonderful view of Mount Boltons Eastern Peake to the west of it. 2012 & 2016 were the only single bottling of this cuveé its so great to have it back again. Normally this wine is the major component of the Intrinsic Pinot Noir, I really wanted to keep a few barrels seperate as it had been a while since a single vineyard wine was produced.

MV6 clone grown on well looked after Volcanic grey loam soils over weathered basalt sitting at 430m alt, thoughtfully farmed with strict organic practices & a mix of regenerative agriculture inputs such as rotating cover crops to help with keeping our soils in such pristine condition, flowering was very good considering how extreme the weather was during season 2023. Everything went to plan in the vineyard with our organic practice, the season definitely kept us on our toes along the way with the unpredictable weather presenting a much cooler than expected year that really helped build up amazing flavour profiles & structure in the berries.

Harvested on the 7th & 13th of April, all destemmed into our original 3000L concrete fermenters, as always spontaneous fermentation via our indigenous yeasts , pump overs once a day, basket pressed on the 14/4, kept separate & transferred into 228L barriques of various French coopers (mostly Siruge & Dominique Laurent 30% new), topped monthly, sulphur added post malo in November, racked from barrels in late march 2024 to stainless tank where its left to enjoy another full winter to gain complexity & naturally settle prior to bottling, no fining or filtering. - Owen Latta, Winemaker.