Best's Great Western Old Vine Pinot Meunier 2021

The Millers Burgundy vineyard, first planted in 1868, is made up of mostly Pinot Meunier and a little Pinot Noir. This unique vineyard block is treated with meticulous care and in good vintages this block is made into a ‘single vineyard’ wine. The grapes are hand-picked, hand-sorted and hand-plunged in open vats and aged in French oak barrels.

An excellent season with near perfect growing conditions right through to harvest. Adequate winter and spring rainfalls set the wines up to burst into life and sustain beautifully balanced growth throughout the summer. Autumn was ideal with little rainfall and warm conditions to ensure the grapes matured gracefully.

“This is an incredible wine. Raspberry, cranberry, aniseed and white pepper, so crisp and vibrant, wonderful dusty peppery tannin, intensity with so little weight, so much spice and perfume, fresh and dynamic, and so bloody individual. The finish is very long, blood orange and layers of spice. I love it. So good. What a wine!”  96 points, Gary Walsh, WineFront

“Hand-picked fruit fermented in small, open-top fermenter with 25% whole bunches, basket pressed to French barriques (25% new), matured 8 months in oak. Sourced from the original 1868 plantings of pinot meunier. Prepare yourself for an exquisite beauty of a wine. It enjoys an effortless purity of fruit; from aroma to palate there's a delicacy of concentrated red berries, pomegranate, violet, dusty earth, underbrush and dried herbs. Superfine across the palate, almost sinewy at this early stage, but supported by firm, focused tannins for a lot more time in bottle. A lot more.”  96 points, Jeni Port, Halliday Wine Companion

“Medium ruby colour with a good purple tinge. The bouquet has depth and savouriness, all about dried herbs, porcini mushrooms and peppery dried meat and bresaola. It is light-bodied but beautifully textured and supple, super-refined, with great drinkability and is already starting to show complexity. Long and satisfying in the mouth. A superb example of the grape.”  96 points, Huon Hooke, The Real Review