2022 Animale Pinot Noir

WINEMAKER: Dave Mackintosh
REGION: Yarra Valley, VIC
VARIETAL: Pinot Noir
VITICULTURE: Organic

Davebro's ANIMALE is back, finally. This is good gear.

The 2022 vintage in the Yarra Valley was a tale of two halves: the quality was extremely high; yields… not so much. A wet and cold Spring in 2021 led to a long and slow flowering period and the resulting poor fruit set meant that crops were down by around 50% for the Animale sources. It’s not all doom and gloom though, the rest of the growing season was mild and stress-free with plenty of warm days and cool nights allowing the vine to ripen the fruit slowly and evenly. So, small but mighty might be an apt description here team.

This year, 76% of the fruit was sourced from the Cahilton vineyard in the lower Yarra Valley Valley and 24% was from the Yarra Station vineyard, also in the lower Yarra Valley (a north-facing slope of ironstone rich, grey clay loams in the Yarra Glen sub-region).

The Cahilton Pinot Noir was completely destemmed and fermented for 20 days with light daily pump-overs, followed by a few plunges towards the end of maceration. The wine was then pressed to old hogsheads and barriques for malo and maturation. The fruit from the Yarra Station vineyard was fermented as whole bunches for approximately 12 days. After a few light stomps, it was pressed to stay on light lees in old barriques. Both wines went through malo in barrel and were bottled unfined and unfiltered.