By Farr Farrside Pinot Noir 2022

A pitch perfect Farrside Pinot Noir and an excellent addition for serious cellars. There’s real intensity to this release, its vibrancy almost underplays the density of this wine. Just bristling with savouriness and has layers of complexity. 

The Farrside vineyard sits on a northeast-facing slope and consists of limestone topped with black volcanic soil. The vines were planted in 2001 and run east-west to protect the fruit from overexposure to the sun. The clones are a mixture of 114, 115, 777, 667 and MV6. Even though the Farrside and Sangreal vineyards are only 300 metres apart, the darker soils and cooler growing conditions of the Farrside vineyard mean these grapes are picked 10 to 12 days after all others and produce a more masculine and edgy wine.

The fruit is hand-picked and sorted in the vineyard, then fermented in an open-top fermenter. Between 40-50% of the fruit will be stemmed and then cold soaked for four days. We use only the natural yeast for the fermentation process, which takes roughly 12 days. Grape-stomping (known as pigeage) will occur two to three times a day depending on the amount of extraction required, and the wine is then placed in 50-60% new Allier barrels by gravity. It is racked by gas after secondary fermentation, then again at 18 months to be bottled.