January 2025 Releases: Home Hill 2023 Estate Pinot Noir $60 & Rivulet Glaziers Bay 2022 Pinot Noir $53

Home Hill Estate 2023 Pinot Noir $60

The Vineyard

The vineyard was planted out in 1992 with Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and Sylvaner grapes. The grey loam, high-clay soil and reliable rainfall provide excellent growing conditions for these varieties.
The Huon Valley sits on the same degree of latitude as Bordeaux in France (albeit forty-three degrees south of the equator rather than north). These regions share a similar climate, with winters featuring fog, frost and snow, and an abundance of spring rain. This allows for the slow ripening of fruit during warm months and the perfect conditions for cool climate wine to be produced.

Awards:
Home Hill 2023 Estate Pinot Noir
Trophy - Champion Red Wine,  Australian Small Winemakers Show
Trophy - Best Pinot Noir,  Australian Small Winemakers Show
Trophy - Champion Winemaker,  Catalina Collada

Tasting notes:
This wine exhibits all the hall marks of its cool climate origin. Deep dark ruby in colour, with aromas of sweet red cherry, blackberries, boysenberries and perfumes of forest floor. The wine is very concentrated with good structure, the middle palate displays chocolate, almond, touch of vanilla and uplifting sweet fruit. This wine was 3% whole bunch, 20% new french oak and was oaked for 10 months. A well-balanced wine with fine texture and chalky tannins. Soft and silky on the back palate with a long elegant after taste. Cellar 15 years.

Rivulet Glaziers Bay 2022 Pinot Noir $53

A welcome return to working with the exceptional fruit from the very special Elsewhere Vineyard in Tasmania’s far south, located between Cygnet and Huonville in the Huon Valley. Elsewhere is where it all began in the Huon Valley and was its first commercial vineyard, established in 1982. Restored to its former glory and tended with meticulous attention to detail by Owen and Eve Knight.

114/115 clone Pinot Noir taken from 22 year old vines, unirrigated and deeply rooted in black cracking clay soils. From the Home block at Elsewhere Vineyard.

Handpicked and fermented in an open fermenter, with 25% whole bunches with whole berries destemmed over the top allowing for partial carbonic fermentation. Cold soaked for 6 days before fermentation with gentle pump overs. 22 days on skins and racked to French oak barriques and hogsheads for eleven months maturation on fine lees, with 16% new oak. Unfined.

Total production 1900 bottles.

Drink: 2024 to 2032
                              
Pinot noir sourced from the Elsewhere vineyard, between Cygnet and Huonville in the Huon Valley; 25% whole bunches, matured for 11 months in French oak (16% new). Phwoar ... this smells great. Red cherries, raspberries and cranberry notes are supported by hints of exotic spice, amaro herbs, washed rind cheese, Peking duck, undergrowth and mushrooms. It's vivid and detailed with pure fruit and an enchanting gamey, wild side, stony fine tannins and a sapid acid pulse. A great release from Keira O'Brien.
- 95 points. Dave Brookes, Halliday Wine Companion

This is bang on too. It’s a ripper. It has a sordid complexity and yet it also feels fresh, eager and fruit-driven. It’s the finish though that really seals it; it just has that extra fan to it. Dark cherries, roasted meats, undergrowth and cedar, with suggestions of mineral to the tannin. It’s a gorgeous wine and again, while it will mature well, it’s already singing a beautiful song.
- 95 points. Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front