Aromas
Our Speaker for September was Warren Gibson, winemaker from Trinity Hill Wines and also has his own label Bilancia. Warren has worked at Trinity Hill for 17 years!
Warren advised that while aromas are important most consumers were more interested in the flavours, with many varieties having their own unique flavours e.g. vigonior – changes through citrus blossom /lavender/dried apricot with ripeness; Old Cabernets get Leather or Truffles etc. while oak adds Coffee, and or Toast aromas.
He emphasised the difficulty from small batches (or micro batches as we make) and that they need to be kept cool and fresh to retain the highly volatile aromas. They use test bottles to evaluate the wines filling them with argon to ensure no changes due to breathing.
Many of their wines are started or made entirely with wild yeasts and they actually go hunting these in the vineyards. Additionally many wines are aged for long periods on the Lees.
Barrels can be stored if not used by filling with water of low PH and Sulphur and as new french oak barrels can cost around $1300 each they must be looked after.
One of the keys to their production is “Don’t Fight Nature”.
Trinity Hill make wine in about 120 to 130 lots to finish with blends of 20 to 30 different styles. Samples were tasted and found to be excellent. 🙂
We were all fascinated to sample and try to guess the smells from the Aroma board and Jason won a bottle of wine for correctly identifying Licorice.
Our thanks to Warren for his inspiring talk and my apologies for my very rough notes…