100% Biodynamically Farmed Verdelho from McLaren Vale

We wanted to make Orange in a very friendly, approachable, textural style. The resulting wine is vibrant orange in colour, unfined and unfiltered so the wine has an appealing cloudiness. Heaps of ginger spice, tangerine, orange peel, baked pears, and hints of toffee apple on the nose, with a compelling full palate, textural and soft with bright orange pith, mandarin crunch, and soft brioche and caramel notes.

What a vintage, you rarely get high yields and high quality, they are usually mutually exclusive, not 2021. It was a very mild summer, so ripening was slow and consistent, excellent flavour development at lower sugar than in a typical warm year. Verdelho was among the first picks of the winery, and we split the pick into two different picks, to get freshness and acidity in the early pick, and a bit more density and depth out of the second pick. This vintage has great balance between the denser butterscotch ripeness of the 2019 release and the fresh wiry 2020 release.

Picked quite cold, and quickly destemmed and fermented on skins. Both picks we treated as follows, so we had 4 different components from the same vineyard. About 50% was pressed to old oak after one month and was lees stirred fortnightly to build a biscuity, creamy, and soft texture. The other 50% was sealed on skins for 180 days, which provided the framework of the wine with a bit more structure and depth, and a very complex aromatic profile. The later pressed component gives the wine ginger and spiced pear aromatics, whilst the earlier pressed component gives a citrus driven backbone that gives it freshness and high drinkability. Blending the 4 components together gives great complexity and balance, with an excellent soft phenolic grip in 2021 to bring some seriousness to the fun nature of Naranjito.