Risen from the foggy hills on Fleurieu Penisula in South Australia this Aussie-French Connection Pinot Noir infatuated me with its bouquet right from the start. Why Aussie-French Connection you may ask? Well, in 2001 the former Croser Winery was restructured to this very connection between the Croser family, the Cazes family from Chateau Lynch-Bages in Pauillac and not to forget Bollinger Champagne. The soils of Foggy Hill, a former sheep farm, are characterized by the heat retaining ironstone rocks and the nearby south pacific. The cold maceration time took about 20 days and the ageing lasted up to 2 years in 30% new Voges Forest French oak hogsheads. For further technical data I would like to encourage you to check out the Tapanappa website. I think a very explicitly detailed and informative source.
Besides the already mentioned infatuating bouquet its colour surprised me a bit, too. Unusually bright red colour, at least for a New World Pinot – sorry about the generalisation, a bit faint, not a lot of sparkles, and already pretty red-brown on the rim. As I already mentioned, for the third time so far, the nose was just wonderful: tons of elegant and powerful Pinot perfume, plenty of moist forest ground, assorted fine mushrooms, hints of cinnamon, very ripe dark forest berries, here and there some very dark cherries and some smokiness combined with very well proportionate fruitful warmth. Very intense and exciting scents indeed! The taste needed a while to open up. Maybe 20 to 30 minutes. I got a lot of autumn feelings, some ethereal hints, plenty of mushrooms, in particular truffles, very decent fruitful and silky flavours of dark forest berries, a bit of dark cherries, maybe slightly canned or dried (not sure about that) and marvellously integrated oak features. After approx. three hours I sensed very refined milk chocolate flavours combined with an association of bitter raspberry marmalade. The tannin was mostly smoothed, not totally, and the acid was in proper condition. I never felt any importunateness by overpowered alc. (13%), oak, boiled features or simple sweetness. The style of this Pinot appeared to me very serious, rather mineral, very earthy, not all too charming or fruitful or feminine or all too silky. It got quite a lot of rugged and strong character, but with a certain natural buoyancy in its very own unique way!
After three to four hours in the bottle at its peak. No real profit on the second day. It got slightly more earthy, a bit more of truffles and slightly darker in style. No need to wait. Finish it off on the first evening! Beware it got quite a lot of depot! Due to the overwhelming nose I feel free to give a very solid:
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