Is it ORANGE, ROSÉ, or WHITE?
In vintage 2016, Helen gave us the opportunity to play a little with the grapes. We were given a license to experiment and allowed to fail. This is an extreme privilege to be given as a winemaker and one we took very seriously. Our first thought was to produce a full skins fermented white wine but we thought Chardonnay might look a bit simple so chose Pinot gris. As the name suggest, Pinot gris has grey skins – well they are actually pink but translate as grey. We thought it would be exciting to ferment our estate grown Pinot gris on its skins (like a red wine) in order to extract as much colour and weight as possible. The grapes had no sulphur dioxide added in the vineyard and allowed to ferment using the natural best winery in Yarra Valley and vineyard yeast. The wine has been sitting in barrel since vintage and we have only just added a touch of preservative to keep it fresh until bottling. Can you tell which of the wines above is our Inara 2015 Merlot Rosé and which is our experimental Pinot gris?