Peninsula Pinot Noir

The entry tier in the range of Paringa Estate, the Mornington Peninsula property Lindsay McCall built out of an old north-facing orchard on Paringa Road at Red Hill South. He bought it in 1984 and, after clearing it, began planting the year after; a first tiny vintage came in 1987 and the first commercial one in 1988, which is what makes 2022, as the back label has it, the thirty-fifth. His son Jamie joined as assistant winemaker in 2012 and was put in charge of the winemaking ahead of the 2017 vintage. Both are named on the bottle.

Above Peninsula sit an Estate tier off the low-yielding estate vineyards, some of them over thirty years old, and a single-vineyard tier drawn from the oldest blocks of the home vineyard on Paringa Road, made only in years that justify it and folded back into Estate when they do not. Peninsula is the multi-site wine of the three, built from leased vineyards plus a few other carefully selected sites around the region. The count is not consistent across sources: the producer's current page says five leased vineyards, while the Ukrainian importer's copy says three in Red Hill plus fruit bought from growers elsewhere on the Peninsula. Which sites went into any particular year is not published.

The producer's Peninsula sheets for 2020 and 2021 carry an identical recipe, and the importer applies the same text to the 2022: fruit entirely destemmed, fermented in 2.5 tonne open fermenters, an average of 21 days on skins, then eleven months on lees in French oak barriques. The winery's three 3,500 litre French oak foudres belong to the single-vineyard reds rather than to this wine. The bottle declares all Paringa wines vegan, which the producer's own site does not mention.

2022 was a small year on the Peninsula and not a gentle one. Halliday's regional report describes a severe storm with 100 km/h winds during flowering that obliterated yields by up to 60 percent on some sites and 30 percent on others, followed by mild and dry conditions in March. Picking for this wine ran from 14 March to 7 April. The label acknowledges Bunurong Country, using the spelling of the Bunurong Land Council, the registered Aboriginal party whose area covers the Mornington Peninsula.