It is tremendously lonely to own a perfect singular memory that noone else understands. This memory, a bottle of crisp Parelleda accompanying seafood paella on the shores of Tarragona, 2014. What an electric wine, elevating a moment from great to the very great. The ever so slight spritz dancing on the tongue, the acid cutting through the perfect paella crunch, the sweet ballet of life's full potential dancing through your neurons. Oh what a time to be alive that was. Already being an almost solitary champion of Txakoli - another of the great ever so slightly spritzy unappreciated styles - it was a mighty weight to bear, holding a torch to this moment, that wine.
So there he was a decade later, walking the dog, when the spector of the perfect wine re-entered his consiousness. Where had that memory gone? Drowned by the sands of time and the rise of Txakoli from a whispered secret to a brief 'it' wine. Perhaps. Why were there so few Australian iterations? Why are we just not drinking it all the time? Therefore, in this moment, a resolve was built to create a wine in honour of a beautiful lost memory. A wine with ever so slight spritz, delicate acid, and bright fruit that captures the primary beauty of a ferment.
Production - 100% Arneis from the Cavicchiolo Vineyard, King Valley, Victoria. We made this wine with a good mate Mark Matthews from Caledonia Australis as we lacked the cooling equipment at Konpira HQ. The grapes were pressed immediately out in our Whitlands shed and then the juice was transported to Mark's winery in Melbourne's northern 'burbs. We then cold settled this for a week pre-ferment, then left to 18 degrees for a long and slow ferment. Just before dryness the wine was racked into a pressurised tank to finish ferment and hold onto the last of the CO2 produced. Once through it was sulphured and again chilled to 2 degrees and held for a further week to settle as many solids as possible. We then bottled directly from tank.
Tasting Note - As an experimental production method we were praying this would come up the way we had imagined, and boy was it good opening the first bottle over dinner with the crew. Well it ended up being 2 bottles in about 20 minutes...... A refreshing palate of apple strudel with fresh lingering acid with an ever so slight frizz. There is no descriptor that can explain just how drinkable this thing is, a triumph.
