Pinot Noir Piccadilly Valley 2020 Grosset

The grapes to produce the Pinot Noir Piccadilly Valley Grosset were hand picked, then crushed and destemmed. 40% were whole-bunch fermented. Temperature controlled fermentation lasted seven to eight days and was finished in French oak barriques. The wine was matured for 10 months in oak, of which 60% was new. The wine was then bottled without fining and aged for a further nine months before release. Only one bottle was produced from each vine.

The Pinot Noir comes from a single, south-facing vineyard in the Piccadilly Valley in the Adelaide Hills. The soils are predominantly mottled yellow, coarse-grained clays, and some quartz-rich soil over sandstone. In the early 1990s, Grosset was drawn to the intriguing high-acid fruit from these sites, the second coldest place in South Australia. In terms of quality, the rewards of working with such challenging sites have proved to be substantial.

For almost four decades, the Grosset ‘Springvale’ and ‘Polish Hill’ Rieslings have shown a consistency of style and quality that has made this one of Australia’s greatest wineries. The ‘hard rock’ blue slate of the Polish Hill site results in wines that are steely and magnificently ageworthy, while the red loam of the Springvale vineyard gives more open and easily accessible – though no less complex – wines. Such is Jeffrey Grosset’s attention to detail that he noted a small strip (22 metres wide by 300 metres long) in his Rockwood vineyard that produced more generously flavoured wines due to a different soil. Jeffrey is fanatical about the quality of his vineyards, which are certified organic and are hand tended, with a focus on sustainability to offset climate change. In the winery, each process is gentle and uncomplicated. No fining agents are used and sulphur is the only addition. By combining a disciplined approach and decades of experience, Grosset consistently achieves the purest expression of variety and place.