Moss Wood 2011 Pinot Noir
Wine Facts
| Harvest Dates: | 18/02/2011 |
| Bottled: | 15/10/2012 |
| Released: | 20/10/2016 |
| Yield: | 9.36 t/ha |
| Harvest Ripeness: | 12.7°Be |
| Alcohol: | 13.5% |
Moss Wood readers will note this wine is being released after the 2012, 2013 and 2014 vintages. The reason is quite simple. As a youngster, it was a firm beast, dominated by a strong tannin structure and a vintage that we felt needed to settle and age before we could release it. Having been bottled now for 4 years, this wine is starting to really hit its straps and so we feel it’s ready to enter the market.
Tasting Notes
Its colour is still youthful, with medium to deep ruby and garnet notes and little or no development. The nose presents as classical Pinot Noir, displaying red and dark fruits of strawberry, cherry and plum but it is also now beginning to show complexity with classic leather and earthy notes, as well as some spice and tar. On the palate, there is a similar effect, with generous plum and strawberry flavours, sitting over a well-balanced structure of acidity and tannin, firm but not aggressive and giving the wine real length.
Moss Wood 2022 Pinot Noir – Ray Jordan, Ray Jordan Wine
Pinot in Margaret River remains an enigma. Yet when you get good years it works well. The generosity of the ’22 vintage is captured in this pretty and powerful pinot. Wild raspberry and cherry notes with a subtle spice. The palate is deeply intense but delivers a light effortless touch….
Moss Wood 2021 Pinot Noir – Jane Faulkner – James Halliday, The Wine Companion
Vibrant and lively, full of red flowers and redcurrants, black cherries and dried raspberry powder with some red lollies too. The palate is tight, a little lean, yet full of sweet fruit and puckering acidity, which does temper the slight bitter green edge to the tannins. It has an appeal….
Moss Wood 2020 Pinot Noir – Erin Larkin, The Wine Advocate
The 2020 Pinot Noir is concentrated and red fruited, with berries and garden mint. The mint character feels like a vineyard characteristic to me, as I see it so often in the wines, and it sits so well within the red fruit character of the wine, which includes red cherries,…
Moss Wood 2021 Pinot Noir – Erin Larkin, The Wine Advocate
The 2021 Pinot Noir leads with strawberry and garden mint on the nose, which pull through onto the palate. The wine is intense and concentrated, although light in the glass, and it shows a cavalcade of red fruits, briar, rose, cherry, pomegranate and pink peppercorns. This is a really lovely…
WA Wine Review 2024
Ray Jordan “Moss Wood is a family-owned wine company and a pioneer of the Margaret River region. Planted in 1969, Moss Wood is an important founding estate of Margaret River. Clare and Keith Mugford, as viticulturalists, winemakers and proprietors, have been tending the vineyard and making wine at Moss Wood…
Moss Wood 2021 Pinot Noir – Fergal Gleeson, Great Wine Blog
Beautiful aromatics of black and red fruits on the nose. they follow through on tasting along with cola and some fine, earthy tannins. It’s a clean and polished Pinot with great balance and acidity courtesy of a cooler vintage. Not many have followed Moss Wood’s lead on making a premium…
Moss Wood 2021 Pinot Noir – Ray Jordan, Ray Jordan Wine
This cooler vintage was ideal for pinot from this part of Margaret River. Perfumed and highly scented aromas of strawberry and sour cherry with a slightly truffly influence. The velvety palate captures that iron fist in a velvet varietal character. Smooth and seamless with a gossamer like sheen. Beautiful. November,…
Moss Wood 2021 Pinot Noir – Angus Hughson, Wine Pilot.com
This gently fragrant 2021 Pinot Noir offers up fleshy aromas of raspberry compote, tobacco and spice, nicely framed by French oak. Dry, and mid weight, layers of red licorice and raspberry flavours rise up on a supple palate with commendable length. Very approachable to enjoy now and over the medium…
Moss Wood 2021 Pinot Noir – Andrew Caillard, Wine Pilot.com – The Vintage Journal
Medium deep crimson. Very attractive strawberry pastille, red cherry, chinotto aromas and flavours, fine slinky textures, lovely mid palate viscosity and underlying roasted walnut notes. Finishes chalky and minerally with seductive sweet fruits. Early to medium term drinking wine. Drink now – 2027 September, 2023
Moss Wood 2021 Pinot Noir – Ken Gargett, Wine Pilot.com
Always a controversial wine, one wonders whether detractors base their dislike simply on a once-prevailing view that Western Australia cannot or should not make Pinot Noir. These days, we have more than enough evidence that good Pinot can most certainly come from the West. Others simply like the wine because…
Vintage Notes
Ripening Time from Flowering to Harvest: 105 days
Looking back, calendar year 2010 is easily summarised as cool to mild and dry, with rainfall down 11%. However, by the end of October, when the vines flowered, the weather had begun to warm up and the Pinot Noir positively sprinted through the process, completing it in 14 days and was no doubt assisted by 8 days where the temperature got over 25⁰C.
From then on things remained warm, encouraging consistent ripening. In particular, December temperatures were slightly above average and February was a genuinely warm one. At 23.76°C mean temperature it was essentially 2⁰C higher than normal and brought the vintage on with a bit of rush.
With the excellent flowering conditions, it was no surprise that yield was good. Both our clones, D4V2 and D5V12a were above average and across the Pinot Noir vineyard as a whole, the yield of 9.36 tonnes per hectare, a very significant 49% above average, leading to a slight change in winemaking technique which we’ll discuss later.
With the warm February temperatures things got moving and having started the season a little behind schedule, both clones caught up to an almost average harvest date. D4V2 achieved its final ripeness of 13⁰Baume on 15th February and D5V12a reached 12.5⁰ Baume on the 21st February. This gave a median harvest date of 18th, 4 days earlier than the mean.
Production Notes
After hand picking, the fruit was taken to the winery and destemmed into small, open fermenters. With such good quantities and in light of Pinot Noir’s sensitivity to high yields, we drained off 20% of the juice to help improve the concentration of the skins, to ensure there was no lack of colour or flavour. After 2 days of soaking at 10⁰C, the must was allowed to warm, was seeded with selected yeast strains for primary fermentation and which progressed at temperatures up to 32⁰C. After 14 days on skins each batch was pressed to stainless steel and all underwent malolactic fermentation. After MLF, both batches were racked to oak on 23rd March 2011, all barrels were 228 litre French, and 10% were new. After almost exactly 18 months, the wine was racked to stainless steel on 17th September, 2012 and underwent fining trials. After tasting we concluded the wine needed no treatments and so it was sterile filtered and bottled on 15th October, 2012.
Cellaring Notes
At 5 years of age, the wine is essentially still “young” and dominated by its fruit characters. It has really only just begun to show hints of bottle development. That gives us great confidence that it’s on track to be repay long term cellaring and our current expectation is it will need at least another decade to reach full maturity. More importantly, however, by virtue of the delayed release, it is one of the most settled and balanced Moss Wood Pinot Noirs we have offered and is very enjoyable now.