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Ochota Barrels

2023

‘The Green Room’

Grenache Noir   |   McLaren Vale - Australia

About

This is the fifth vintage of the wine being varietally labelled. The Greek Room Vineyard, a.k.a. the Grancari vineyard in the Onkaparinga Hills, has always been the source of fruit for this wine and remains one of the great sites in the Ochota Barrels’ lineup.  ‘The Green Room’ was created as an incubator of sorts for a wine ready for the ‘big stage’ and this wine has certainly arrived and the name will continue moving forward. The Grenache for this wine was Amber’s earliest pick of the year for this vineyard, which is owned and operated by the Ochotas’ dear old friend, Rino. The 81-year-old certified organic vines are tucked in behind suburbia, and with an easy and lightly worked fermentation comes a youthful, fragrant, and bright wine.

The fruit was hand-harvested over two weeks in mid-February. The fruit was fermented with ambient yeasts, with about half the batch fermenting entirely whole-cluster.  The fruit was all cold-soaked for five days until wild yeast fermentation kicked off. The ferments were gently foot stomped and hang plunged between one week and a month depending on the ferment. The wine was basket-pressed to old French barriques for five months of aging then blended and settled in tank. It was bottled without fining and just a small 46 ppm sulfur addition and pad filtration.

Stats

  • Grapes: 100% Grenache
  • Vineyard: Grancari Vineyard (Onkaparinga Hills)
  • Vine Age: 81-years-old
  • Soil Type: Red loamy clay with ironstone over deep limestone
  • Viticulture: Certified organic
  • Fermentation: Native – open-top fermenters with a mix of whole clusters and whole berries
  • Skin Contact: 10 days
  • Aging: 5 months in old French barrique
  • Alcohol: 12.2%
  • pH: 3.52
  • Total Acidity: 5.2 g/L
  • Total SO2: 46 ppm
  • Total Production: 523 cases
  • UPC: None

Tasting Note

Shimmering garnet color.  Aromas of blueberry, white strawberry and lemon-blueberry juice waft with a stalky characteristic and notes of orange peel and bitter spice elements.  There are fine, sandy tannins that lead to a mouth-watering, thirst-quenching finish.

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