Happy Halloween: Weinbau Kraemer Müller-Thurgau Steillage 2015, Franken

Year in and year out there must be some room for a little Halloween interlude on my blog! This year it is time for some Müller-Thurgau! Wines made from Müller-Thurgau have doubtlessly an enormous potential to be a perfect match with this “holiday”. Most of them are frightful and downright scary! This Steillagen Müller-Thurgau 2015 from Stephan Kraemer is different! Luckily, it does not really have such a questionable potential! Let's have a look ...

Ten Minutes by Tractor Pinot Noir 10X 2012, Mornington Peninsula

Back to Straya! Of course not to one of those massive Fatty Finn kind'ish regions like Barossa, McLaren or Coonawarra (by the way, why was this kid-movie character called Fatty Finn? Can't remember! He wasn't fat, wasn't he? Maybe some local reader has an answer …). Well, what would the tongue of a despicable Burgundy wine snob – like mine – do in such places after all?! There are far too many interesting, and perhaps still not so extremely well know, cooler climate wine regions in Australia. So, this time it had to be Mornington Peninsula a bit south-east of Melbourne – again. This time without ridiculous anecdotes from my student travels in Victoria. Promise! With the Aylward Pinot Noir some months ago I was a bit too chatty ... I am afraid. I don't want you to get a wrong impression of me. I didn't (constantly) fill myself up with cheap local fizz etc. (but no evil Rosé, even I had to keep a trace of self esteem). I also enjoyed some really nice and mostly cooler appearing Shiraz based wines from the north-west of Melbourne and the Yarra Valley. Something I really got to get back to! It is just so tricky to get these wines in Europe. Perhaps early next year I will give it a try! 

Anyway, now to today's Pinot Noir! It was produced by a rather well know local wineproducer called: Ten Minutes by Tractor – referring to the distance between the three original vineyards of the winery. In 1982 Richard McIntyre purchased land "that was to become Moorooduc Estate and began his own wine voyage of discovery, a voyage that was to intersect with Ten Minutes By Tractor when, already with over a decade of winemaking experience, he made our first experimental wines in 1999 and the first commercial release the following year“. In the early 1990s the McCutcheon and Wallis families joined in. But until 1999 all of them sold most of their grapes and did only some experimenting for themselves. So, it took a while to establish the now quite successful business. Today's 10X Pinot Noir was pretty much produced right from the start. Its first vintage was 2000. The grapes for my 2012 10X Pinot Noir were cultivated on the vineyards: Coolart Road (76%), Northway (10%), Wallis (8%) and McCutcheon (6%). The used clones were: MV6 (46%), 115 (30%), 777 (16%), Pommard (5%) and G5V15 (3%). Have I mentioned that Ten Minutes by Tractor has a magnificently detailed webpage? Check it if you are into details. I better won't overdo it with the specifics here! Back to the wine. The grapes were handpicked between March 1^st and 23^rd and fully destemmed. A subsequent 4-6 day pre-ferment maceration preceded a 100% wild yeast fermentation with manual plunging throughout and followed by a short post-ferment maceration of 17-22 days on skins. The ageing in 18% new medium toasted French oak took place for about 10 months. So, let's just see what I've tasted in this one ...