Farr Rising Gamay 2024

The gamay was grafted onto own rooted cabernet vines, which were planted in 1999. The soil is black cracking clay soil, with a mixture of submerged volcanic pebbles and boulders at one end, and a more friable and slightly more vigorous chocolate-coloured soil at the other. The first fruit was picked during the 2014 vintage.

The grapes are hand-picked and sorted in the vineyard, then placed in the tank as whole bunches. The tank is sealed and left for 10 days to ferment naturally and release carbonic fruit aromas. The fruit is foot stomped, pressed on days 11 and 12, and then placed in five-year-old barrels to finish the fermentation process. The wine is bottled eight months later.

‘Big, dark, and bright colour in the glass. The nose is intense dark spice, punchy with a hit of salinity, savoury herbs and graphite. Behind this assertive forward barrage, or perhaps layered between it, is a perfumed and pretty musk and confectionary element that gives away it’s carbonic production method. The second sniff is more brown spice, mace and cloves, then ripe Christmas cherries. It’s Gamay of course, with broad, confident strokes of the Farr house style.
The palate is summer berries and cream. There is a lovely softness, a full mouth feel and a generosity that sets it apart from most iterations of this grape, but doesn’t stray so far that it loses the archetypal Gamay-ness that is expected. Sitting confidently in the Goldilocks zone of Gamay expression, with a foot clearly in the “more serious than you think” zone, this is a beautiful bottle of wine from one of the Country’s best proponents of Gamay.’ Nick Farr