How times have changed…this is a modern-day update on the traditional Australian ‘Sparkling Burgundy’ as it used to be called until the EU stepped in and thought that wasn’t cool. Sepelt’s and Rockford’s Sparkling Shiraz were the default créme de la créme of the sparkling red world until, well, Mt. Midoriyama was discovered! The label references the mighty Makoto Nagano scaling Mt Midoriyama for a Total Victory in Ninja Warrior 17, a moment of sporting majesty that gave the wine company its name. This is a wine with endless bright fruit and fleshiness in a world that often produces wines that are austere and one-dimensional. The fruit all hails from Chalmers’ organic ‘Merbein Vineyard’ near Mildura in the Murray Darling region.
The fruit was hand-harvested, destemmed and crushed then pressed immediately. The varieties were then blended, chilled and transported to the winery in Melbourne. This ensured the juice was kept as fresh as possible during the six-hour commute. It was then cold settled for two weeks to extract most of the tartrates and settle the juice of any impurities, then then racked and left to undergo natural fermentation. When the sugar levels began to near ideal bottling levels, the cooling was used again to slow the ferment for a consistent bottling. It was bottled with 12 g/L of sugar and left for two weeks to finish fermentation in bottle. The wine was then hand-disgorged, topped, re-capped, cleaned, labelled and put into tidy boxes to be shipped to salivating mouths around the globe.