Description
Tete De Cuvee means the best of the vintage. This wine was born through Bill and Dan ‘s love of the great Burgundies and their desire to make the best Burgundian style Pinot Noir in Australia.
The fruit for this flagship wine undergoes vigorous crop thinning and leaf plucking in vineyard to emphasise structure and ageing potential. They grow 5 different clones and is minimally cropped at 5 tonnes per hectare (35 hectolitres per hectare like burgundy) and has all of the leaves hand plucked from the fruiting zone. Bill and Dan believe that the great wines from Burgundy have fruit flavours at the lower end of the ripeness spectrum on the back palate. giving them length and complexity. Therefore, the fruit for this wine is picked less mature with a heavier emphasis on structure and cellarability.
In The Winery focus is on the huge structure and longevity which the wine has. it is cold macerated for longer periods. fermented with a higher portion of whole bunch fruit (to extract more tannin). fermented warmer for longer with a higher permanent skin contact area. It is then pressed harder to get more extraction. The resultant wine is then matured in new to four year old oak for 12 months. After barrel maturation it is given a very light filtration and bottled. It is then held in bottle until the Pannell Family feel that it is drinking at its optimum potential. The Pannell Family are confident that the Picardy Tete de Cuvee will continue to drink superbly long after it has been released.
2006 vintage was a very cool, long, late and damp vintage which produced great Pinot Noir.
“Bold and fully aware of its intentions with stems, smoke and stalks with plum and strawberry fruit backed with fine cedar/vanilla oak. Light to medium bodied but powerful with a firm dry palate offering freshness and a mix of red fruits, plum, stalk and ash. It flows through the mouth with purpose and finishes long and dry. Borderline for stalky characters but I find beauty here. 94 points.” Gary Walsh The Wine Front.
