2022 Animale Amber Gris

WINEMAKER: Dave Mackintosh
REGION: Yarra Valley, VIC
VARIETAL: Pinot Gris
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's blend is 65% Cahilton vineyard in the lower Yarra Valley (a limestone-rich, west-facing slope in the Gruyere subregion) and 35% Gunnabee vineyard in the upper Yarra Valley (a north-facing slope of volcanic soils to the east of the Dandenong Ranges).

The Cahilton fruit was gently destemmed to open-top fermenters for some skin contact. Natural fermentation started after a few days, and the grapes were then pushed around a bit to extract colour, flavour and tannin. The Gunnabee fruit was pressed directly to old barrel on full solids for wild ferment. After 2 weeks it was pressed off skins to old barrels and puncheons where it underwent malo and aged for four months. No fining, no filtration and just minimal sulphur used at bottling.