As its name suggests, ‘Mountain Tops’ is made from grapes sourced at a high altitude Piccadilly vineyard in the Adelaide Hills. This wine is also an ode to the most nourishing, comforting, nurturing of all topographic formations… Louis could only hope to make wine that brings the same joy to people that pink mountain tops, a most inspiring muse, always manage to do…  On the label is the radio towers of Mount Lofty, South Australia’s highest peak on the back slope of which this vineyard lies. The 2024 vintage was a reminder that the ‘classic’ vintages still occur in what has been a tumultuous run of late.  A wet spring with loads of rainfall into early summer was then followed by summer filled with warm days and cold nights and no heat spikes.  A cool end of the season made harvest nearly relaxing. Louis felt the fruit didn’t have the intensity of ’24 and toned back the new wood slightly and the result is a stunning example of Piccadilly Pinot.

The wine is made with three clones – Clones MV6, D5V12, 114 & 115, on Southern, Eastern, and Western aspects – from a few different picks. The wine fermented spontaneously with varying percentages of whole bunch and time on skins, some carbonic. Overall, it saw 10-15 days of skin contact in open-top fermenters.  The wine went dry on the skins and was gently pressed to predominantly old oak where it sat on fine lees for 9 months.  Malolactic carried out in barrel naturally in November.  The barrels were then selected and racked to tank where it settled naturally without fining and was bottled with a coarse paddle filtration and small addition of sulfur.