Meadowbank Nouveau Syrah Pinot 2021 (6 Bottles) Derwent Valley, Tasmania

$317.00 GST Included

AUSTRALIA WIDE SHIPPING INCLUDED

Peter Dredge’s Syrah Pinot may not have existed were it not for Tasmania’s devastating 2019 bush fires. With no single-varietal 2019 Pinot slated for release, Meadowbank have let us down easy here with a lip-smacking, juicy blend of 45% Pinot Noir and 55% Syrah. The two, given the Nouveau treatment, make happy bedfellows.

Fruit is drawn from Estate-grown vines planted in both 1987 and 2015; parcels were fermented separately–50% with carbonic maceration for seven days, followed by de-stemming then an additional two days on skins, and the other half with whole-berry, natural ferment for 10 days on skins.

Maturation took place in old French oak casks for four months before the total was racked, blended and bottled–unfined, unfiltered and with minimal sulphur. Dive right in…

The Nouveau bottling is the legacy of Tasmania’s devastating 2019 bushfires when no single-vineyard Pinot was bottled. Instead, the fruit Dredge could rescue ended up in a juicy, lip-smacking blend. 2020’s iteration is a fusion of Syrah from Meadowbank’s Top Woolshed vineyard and 10% old-vine Pinot. Dredge picked the Syrah early for freshness and vivacity, and the crop was fully destemmed. The Pinot was partially fermented as whole bunches, bringing “fresh fruit lift, softening the grip, and introducing floral aromas”. With a portion of carbonic, the wine spent only 10 days on skins and was matured in old French oak for nine months.

The upshot in an engaging brew of cherry-skin juiciness and springtime sappiness combined with a refreshing nip of Pinot-like tannin and racy, cherry-pip acidity. Glouglou with definition.

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About Meadowbank 

High in Tasmania’s Derwent Valley, hidden at the end of a winding dirt road, lies a place that is shimmering with life. Playing witness each year to a dance-like ritual between warm days and cool nights, Meadowbank produces fruit of a near ethereal quality – a quality that almost never was.

For when Gerald Ellis started planting vines on his sheep farm in ’76, conventional wisdom said you couldn’t grow grapes in the cold wilds of Tasmania. Too wild, too unpredictable, too ‘at the edge of the world’ – “it can’t be done“. They would have been right, except for the fact that he did.

Through farming intuition, and the odd sprinkling of luck, Meadowbank is now regarded as a Tasmanian pioneer and iconic grower of wine. It is reward for the intuitive defiance in those earliest of days – a defiance that has been distilled in Ellis blood since 1827 and the arrival in Tasmania of our convict ancestor, young William Ellis.

Enterprising and innovative, the story goes that William Ellis established a hotel near Hobart, although quickly managed to find himself in trouble with the law again. It appears drinking and dancing on Sundays were frowned upon back then, but enjoyment of life and a defiance of convention were clearly hard traits to ignore, and remain a spirit that runs deep within the Ellis blood still.

And so we jump back to the future, as Gerald’s daughter, Mardi Ellis, now carries the torch as a custodian of Meadowbank for future generations. Add to this the arrival of celebrated winemaker, Peter Dredge – part artist, part scientist, total legend – and the best of our vineyard now finds its way into the wines that bear the Meadowbank name.

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