Sheesh, I'm getting worse. We picked months ago and I still haven't posted anything.
All'ya'all'd (I larn'd me that in the USofA) be sick of me gloating about what we drink after picking, but that won't stop me.
I picked over 2 days again this year, well more like 1.5. I'd like to say teams 1 and 2 were so brilliant than we left little for team 3, but truth is the rain gods were fickle (does that suggest goddess? /duck), and so the yield was somewhat reduced on last year.
Saying the quality was high in the Marius vineyard is a somewhat of a tautology, but it was. The wonderful thing, to me anyway, is that the grape flavours were like no other year I've tasted yet. It's subtle of course, since the Marius grapes are like no other grapes, but I expect yet again the wines to be similarly different as they were over the last 10 years (there's another post here about that somewhere).
On pick #3, we actually tried the 2015 "wine" ferment from day 1, and a week later it was pretty well finished in terms of sugar to alcohol but it will spend more time on skins until Roger thinks it's "done". Rather impressive really, clearly not going to be a featherweight, and really nice silky/rounded tannins, so I ordered a dozen.
To the tastings. I was also lazy with photos this year. You get this:
The moral winner is the 2005 barrel sample Mataro, lost for a decade and then pops up to show how bloody good Mataro can be even when you treat it so rudely. The one on the right was not a Matarius, but a super secret sample of which I may not yet speak. The 2002 was vibrant as hell and a great wine, thankfully under screwcap and I expect will easily go another 10 years. End Play is nowhere near it's end, keep it a bit longer I reckon, though drinking very well now.
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