Ministry Of Clouds Pinot Noir 2024

Taste of freedom…

Without having the luxury (or limitation) of a pre- ordained family history in wine, we relish the freedom and opportunity to cast our net a little wider from our home in McLaren Vale, hoping to capture the freshness and vibrancy of the cool Adelaide Hills… With great vineyards being rare, and with great Pinot Noir vineyards being even rarer still, we have patiently waited until this single stunning and precipitous site came along to make our first Pinot Noir.
We thank the Gilbert/Ramsay family for this opportunity.

Pinot Noir is rightly regarded as one of the Holy Grail varieties, measured both by the difficulty it presents in producing the very best examples, and the searingly memorable wines it produces at its qualitative summit. To this end this wine is based upon a single site in the renowned Piccadilly Valley situated at a height of 500m. Intelligently planted to four clones (114, 115, MV6, 777) we picked across all of these clones on a single day and co-fermented to build fruit complexity and layered tannin. With a cool season evident, and green stems, we 100% de-stemmed to wholeberries, drained off 10% to concentrate flavour, for a wild ferment in traditional open vats. Hand plunged daily, and after two weeks on skins, we basket pressed to a mix of new and old French oak hogsheads for 8 months maturation upon fine lees.