Description
"Tout Pres is made using the same process as the other two pinots. It is fermented with 100 per cent whole bunches (80 per cent in 2011) in a five-tonne oak fermenter. This wine has the largest flavour profile and intensity, to absorb 100 per cent new French oak from Allier. A wine with truly understated power and richness—the classic peacock’s tail." - Winemaker Notes
"“The Tout Pres vineyard is a terribly good site. Apart from being photogenic and physically demanding to prune, harvest, and generally take care of, the wine that is produced from this daunting site is always terrific. If you aren’t familiar with it, it is laid across the gentle slope past the winery overlooking the Moorabool valley. It’s barely an arm’s width between rows, and most of the work must be undertaken while hunched. It is no friend to tall people, or particularly wide people, either. Thankfully, through struggle comes a more complex wine. Tout Pres always seems more delayed in how it reveals itself. This shyness is most obvious in the nose, not least as that’s the first interaction you have with it. The wine always sits a little lower in the glass than the others; it feels just out of each. The palate gives more immediate notes of peppery spice, not pepper so much, but a prickly, tighter spice with a little more attack. There is a dried, earthy note here, some cola, dark cocoa and black cherries. It feels almost brittle at times, certainly in its youth, but you wouldn’t mistake that for delicacy. It’s hard to describe it, but the wine is confident and deliberate, but there is something about this wine that is fragile too. The chalky texture of this wine, paired with the crisp yet fine acidity, couldn’t be better. I imagine is this part of the wine gives that sense of fragility; it feels like the wine snaps on your tongue. I love it.” - Ben Knight, Wine Educator & Journalist (benandwine.com)
