Gamay is on the rise in Australia, particularly in the Adelaide Hills. The fruit comes from Sam’s Eureka Vineyard in Woodside, an old gold mine with lots of quartz. If you go back to your Earth Science days in high school, you may remember that granite must contain at least 20% quartz – which means the soil type here is not altogether that different than in Northern Beaujolais. But don’t put this bad boy in the stuffy Cru camp. Blue Eyes is an easy wine, unfettered, one to sip just for the pleasure of it.
From vines planted in the early 2000s and regrafted in 2018, the Gamay is brought into the cellar to ferment after destemming in open-top fermenters. The wine spends 8 days on its skins before being pressed off. It spends 9 months in neutral oak before being bottled without fining or filtering, and just a small sulfur addition.