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Tasting Notes

The Moss Wood 2005 Ribbon Vale Vineyard Semillon Sauvignon Blanc is fresh and vibrant, deeply concentrated and powerfully flavoured with intense grassy, green bean characters with some lychee and guava notes and a hint of minerality. It has finesse, lively juiciness and taut zesty acidity.

Review: Sunday Times Magazine – Top 100 wines – page 23 – November 20, 2005reviewed by Peter Forrestal. The best example yet from Moss Wood of this quintessential Margaret River summer blend: aromatic, powerfully concentrated, green-bean, grassy flavours and fresh, zesty acidity. 17.5/20

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Vintage Notes

This wine has the benefit of coming from an excellent vintage in Margaret River for this classic blend. The team at Moss Wood are also becoming more confident of what the vineyard can do and are trying to extend the quality parameters even further.

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Production Notes

We are trying to push the sauvignon blanc to the max to get vibrant primary fruit. Part of this means making the sauvignon less complex and so there is less lees stirring of the variety in tank. It is then blended back with the riper Semillon (picked between 13.5 and 14° beaume) which has had full lees stirring and therefore, good weight and length. The two make a good combination with the zestiness of sauvignon blanc and full flavour and complexity of semillon.

While we are happy to tolerate some phenolics in the Moss Wood Semillon, the Semillon Sauvignon Blanc must have a pristine, fresh finish – so phenolics are minimised. The preferred blend is 50:50 but in 2005 it finished at 60% semillon: 40% sauvignon because Mother Nature has the final say on vineyard yields, not the vineyard manager!

More sauvignon blanc has been planted at Ribbon Vale and so it’s expected that the blend will eventually be consistently 50:50.