100% Granite Belt fruit. The Pinot Grigio wine I’m most familiar with on The Granite Belt is this one from Ravens Croft Wines. I’m not sure there’s another Pinot Grigio on The Granite Belt, Heritage Estate and Robert Channon Wines make a Pinot Gris (same grape but wine made in a different style). Mark’s Pinot Grigio is always right up there with the best I’ve tried in Australia, so I was really interested to try this 2021 rendition.
Certainly a young looking wine in the glass with typical very light straw with some golden hues you come to expect from the less extracted Pinot Grigio. The 2019 showed deeper colours reminiscent of high quality champagne due to the deeply coloured skins of the drought vintage – this one is more gently coloured.
Drifting nuances of pears and apples on a background of light citrus blossoms accompanied by rock melon are wafted upward in a pleasantly inviting bouquet.
The palate is driven by a fine line of acid which begins with a gentle caress and then delivers some late crunchiness. Nashi pear meshes with some crisp white fleshed red apple, then some later lemony/lime influences more zesty than fleshy but in a somewhat subdued way. There is a lovely mineral presence and somewhere in the midst of it all I can encounter a little reticent and introverted guava and then there is some late fennel spice. All of this complexity is bound together and woven through a gently refreshing experience that is prolonged and enjoyable. The process of making a Pinot Grigio demands a softer hand and trust in what that lesser intervention will deliver, this one maintains the Ravens Croft Wines lineage with apparent alacrity.
All of the above suggests seafood but just to be different I had this with lightly flavoured roast organic chicken – no problem with this complementarity.
Tasted: Saturday 17th April, 2021 without food and then with over several hours.
Alcohol: 12%
Closure: Screwcap
Price: $28
Suggested Drinking Window: 2021 – 2024
Winemaker: Mark Ravenscroft
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