Andrew Blake — Marlborough, New Zealand
Tasting Notes
The aroma has an ethereal lift and is full of ripe stone fruit, creamy apricot and dry spice with a funky twist from wild fermentation. The palate is big and luscious but is dry with a acid purity and ripe structure characteristic of this variety.
The alcohol adds an extra dimension to the weight and volume of the wine as well as contributing to the length and persistent flavour.
Winemaking Notes
The Brothers 2010 Marlborough Viognier is produced from grapes grown by contract grower Pete Rose. Viognier is new to Giesen so we made some trial batches from a range of pickings to help us understand the influence of various winemaking techniques. The fruit was hand picked on four separate occasions over eight days. The different ferment batches were all
about 2,000L each and included a clear settled batch to which we added yeast and fermented cool in stainless steel; a batch
fermented warm in plastic on full solids; a wild ferment in barrel with no temperature control; and a final batch fermented with some temperature control in stainless steel then put it in oak at the end of fermentation. The range of fruit and fermentation character was interesting and provided excellent components to work with. The blend comes from 60% older oak barrels, 20% one year old barrels which were a combination of the barrel batches and 20% from cool stainless steel fermentation. The wine required a small casein fining followed by a coarse filtration before bottling in August 2011. Only 1,700 bottles made.
