Yarra Valley Pinot Noir

Wine Details

• Region Yarra Valley, Victoria
• Vintage 2024
• Type Red Wine
• Variety Pinot Noir
• Vegan Friendly ✔
• Volume 750ml
• Alcohol Volume 13.5%
• PH

  3.49

• Standard Drinks 8
• Acidity

  5.9g/L

• Closure ScrewCap
• Bottling Date

  November 2024

• Harvest Date

  February - March 2024

• Background

  Yarra Valley

• Vintage Notes

  The 2024 vintage is a more classic Yarra season. A cool start to spring and ideal flowering conditions lead to good fruit set and moderate yields. December was cool and mild, with significant rainfall at New Years and during the first week of January giving the vines a good drink leading into the heat of February. Mid to late February was drier and warmer than is common in the Yarra, leading to great ripening conditions with no disease pressure and a quite fast vintage. In 2024, all of our Pinot and Chardonnay was ready in quick succession, leading to a compressed harvest - with the whole valley picked in the space of 3 weeks (where it normally spreads across 6 weeks). An exciting ride for our team but ultimately giving us wines with great flavour, bright acidity and balance.

• Vineyard Notes

  Sourced from vineyards across the Yarra Valley. 50% sourced from the upper Yarra ranges.

• Winemaking

  At Giant Steps, we hand pick 100% of our fruit and fastidiously hand sorted in the vineyard. Pinot Noir has one of two processing pathways at Giant Steps - either fermented semi carbonic with 100% whole bunch or destemmed and fermented with whole berries. When the fruit arrives at the winery we determine which direction to take the parcel depending on clone, vineyard, stem ripeness and flavour. For our semi carbonic whole bunch parcels we will process the fruit that afternoon it is picked, without putting it in the cold room over night. These parcels of whole bunch are bunch sorted across a sorting table into the fermenter. The fermenter is then locked up and over the following 14 days will be kept warm and minimally mixed to promote carbonic maceration. The night before pressing we often foot tread the fermenter to break up a few bunches, but otherwise we allow the bunches to remain whole. Following pressing, these batches are then put to barrel with some remaining sugar for barrel fermentation. Our destemmed whole berry treatments have a very different life. These batches are popped into the cold room for the night follow picking to cool down to 4 deg C. The following morning, they are destemmed with bunch and berry hand sorting. The grapes are then cold soaked in stainless steel open fermenters for 3 days before we allow them to warm up and start fermentation naturally. All of our cap management is done using gravity drain and returns, allowing for gentle extraction before pressing. Each parcel is the transferred by gravity to French oak Barriques for malolactic fermentation and is kept on those lees for the duration of its maturation. The parcels are blended together in Spring before bottling in December. Parcels are matured in French oak (10% new, 90% older) for eight months. Blended in October and then bottled by gravity without fining or filtration in November.

• Food Matches

  Turmeric and garlic roasted chicken with couscous. Mushroom Risotto with roasted enoki. BBQ Quail with five spice, fried spring onion and garlic flakes.