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Showing posts from February, 2012
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From the website of the winery: http://www.huet-echansonne.com/Accueil/index.html Le Mont 2010, Domaine Huet Vouvray Aoc In modern agriculture, with the race on for so-called viability and for ever-more intensive productivity, the use of chemicals is constantly increasing. However, the use of chemical weedkillers, insecticides, acaricidal pesticides and systemic compounds (which penetrate into the plant's circulatory system) completely destroys the balance of the soil and the environment. When you kill insects, you also wipe out their natural predators. When you use weedkillers, you destroy all the flora, good and bad alike. The roots remain near the surface of the soil, making the plant more susceptible to drought. The water table becomes polluted. Wine growers and fruit growers are reduced to treating their crops dressed up as astronauts in order to protect themselves.   Rural farmers are constantly approached by salesmen from the huge multinational
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PYRAMID VALLEY NEW ZELAND   River Brook vineyard Riesling.  2.4 tonnes/acre from this close-planted vineyard on Brancott Valley Road; silt-bound gravels. A carefully sorted (for grey rot, underripe bunches) but inclusive (of noble rot, and ripe berries, both turgid and shrivelling) pick, in a season that willed 25% botrytis. Whole bunch pressed, no settling, no fining agents. Indigenous fermentation of 17 months.  Bottled December 2009, on the summer equinox. Alcohol 13.7%, pH 3.41, TA 5.8 g/l, RS 15g/l. Production 190 cases.   Brilliant yellow gold.  Powerful bouquet of yellow fruits - mirabelle, muskmelon, Golden Queen peach - and herb and weed flowers: chamomile, wild fennel, goldenrod. Also an unusual, but intriguing musky/dusty note, no doubt from the noble rot.   Wonderfully rich and broad, mouthcoating and expansive, but with no troubling loss of detail or energy. Slippery and insistent at the same time. Long, complex, ripe yellow finish, with an attractive alm