Andrew Blake, Anna Kinscote — Marlborough, New Zealand
Tasting Notes
The 2010 Giesen Viognier has fragrant aromas of dried nectarine, mandarin pith and toasted almonds. The mid palate has a lovely texture with flavours of fleshy white peach and toasty yeast leading to a long, warm finish showing a typical varietal dryness. Serve chilled.
Winemaking Notes
The 2010 Giesen 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 picking dates to help us understand the influence of various winemaking techniques.
The fruit was hand picked on four separate occasions over eight days. This variety tends to get very ripe before it attains its optimal flavour. 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 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 Estate blend comes from approx 33% older oak barrel ferment, 33% inoculated, cool tank ferment and 33% warm ferment in plastic tank. The wine required a small fining followed by coarse filtration before bottling in September 2011.
