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Chris Ringland Nebbiolo Solita
Last edited on 4/13/2024 by LindsayM
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Another wine I enjoyed that night the Solita Nebbiolo quite a different beast to a Barossa Shiraz.
The Solita is also Nick Stock’s fault.
In 2003, he contacted me, wanting to get involved with a Nebbiolo project.
Nick Stock.
Nick Stock.
I think what made me immediately say “Yeah, I want to do this” was because Nebbiolo is just so different than Shiraz.
My role with Shiraz is to gently coax its existing personality out and preserve it, whereas Nebbiolo is almost the opposite.
Nebbiolo requires the winemaker to do some unusual things sometimes.
I just figured that the complexity of a spontaneous fermentation would add extra layers to the Nebbiolo fruit personality, and that would pay you back down the track.
And it bloody well worked. It was never going to be a big project, a tonne, and a half, a combination of the five different clones that were planted, selected from a specific part of the hillside.
A week before we planned to harvest.
I went down and filled a plastic bucket with Nebbiolo fruit, bought it home, hand de-stemmed and crushed in the kitchen, put a tea towel over it and let it sit in the kitchen to start fermenting by itself.
Then I used that actively fermenting bucket that had been sitting in my kitchen for a week to actually innoculate the ferment I wanted to make a bit of a modern Nebbiolo style, so I decided to use a new French oak large Demi-muid (600L) barrel.
I didn’t want to make a copy of an Italian wine, I wanted to make a wine that actually says something about Australia or about the environment that it comes from.
The Solita is normally released as a 10 year old wine, the Nebbiolo fruit is sourced from the Longview vineyard, near Macclesfield, in the Adelaide Hills.
The vineyard was established by Duncan MacGillivray in the early 90’s and is now owned by the Saturno family.
The Solita is also Nick Stock’s fault.
In 2003, he contacted me, wanting to get involved with a Nebbiolo project.
Nick Stock.
Nick Stock.
I think what made me immediately say “Yeah, I want to do this” was because Nebbiolo is just so different than Shiraz.
My role with Shiraz is to gently coax its existing personality out and preserve it, whereas Nebbiolo is almost the opposite.
Nebbiolo requires the winemaker to do some unusual things sometimes.
I just figured that the complexity of a spontaneous fermentation would add extra layers to the Nebbiolo fruit personality, and that would pay you back down the track.
And it bloody well worked. It was never going to be a big project, a tonne, and a half, a combination of the five different clones that were planted, selected from a specific part of the hillside.
A week before we planned to harvest.
I went down and filled a plastic bucket with Nebbiolo fruit, bought it home, hand de-stemmed and crushed in the kitchen, put a tea towel over it and let it sit in the kitchen to start fermenting by itself.
Then I used that actively fermenting bucket that had been sitting in my kitchen for a week to actually innoculate the ferment I wanted to make a bit of a modern Nebbiolo style, so I decided to use a new French oak large Demi-muid (600L) barrel.
I didn’t want to make a copy of an Italian wine, I wanted to make a wine that actually says something about Australia or about the environment that it comes from.
The Solita is normally released as a 10 year old wine, the Nebbiolo fruit is sourced from the Longview vineyard, near Macclesfield, in the Adelaide Hills.
The vineyard was established by Duncan MacGillivray in the early 90’s and is now owned by the Saturno family.