Ochota Barrels "Texture Like Sun" Grenache Noir, Adelaide Hills, Australia 2023

FROM VINE STREET

THE WINE: 70% Pinot Noir - 10% Shiraz - 10% Gewürztraminer - 5% Pinot Meunier - 5% Gamay. The label may be completely illegible with its utterly lurid and almost painful yellow label. “That’s the idea”, said Taras back in 2018. “It’s something in a clear bottle, released in Spring, nothing to hide, yummy”. This wine has always been about the result and not the components, with each vintage changing quite a bit in the ‘how’s’ and ‘what’s’. The name of the wine is taken from lyrics from the song ‘Golden Brown’ by The Stranglers as it was the song Taras and Amber danced to at their wedding. 2023 marks the third vintage of a new era at Ochota Barrels with Amber taking control in the vineyards and cellar following the tragic passing of her husband Taras. This vintage is a heavily Pinot Noir dominant blend as it was a great year for Adelaide Hills Pinot. Coming off the back of a wet and cold spring and an early cooling summer, a lot of vineyards struggled with ripening especially in the Piccadilly Valley where the majority of this fruit comes from. This allowed for a longer ripening period without the risk of high sugars, leading to a light, juicy and fragrant Adelaide Hills red blend.

The fruit was hand-picked with only the best fruit being used. The clusters were kept separate and cold soaked for a few days, then fermentation kicked off naturally in small, open-top fermenters. The fruit was hand plunged multiple times a day over the course of about eight days prior to being basket-pressed to old French barriques for aging. Amber made the barrel selections for the blend after a few months of aging then blended the wines to tank to settle. It was bottled without fining and just a small 35ppm addition of sulfur and pad filtration.

THE PRODUCER: The Ochota Barrels tale began on a surf trip, late in 2000 along the Mexican west coast in a Volkswagen campervan. A final destination after traveling some of the world’s best wine and surf regions, Taras and Amber Ochota conceived the idea to make super premium wines back home in South Australia. The concept was to concentrate on the zenith variety of McLaren Vale (Grenache) and the Barossa Valley (Shiraz), find an exceptional old vineyard site in each region and create plush, small batch, single vineyard wines. Over the years the regions and vineyards may have shifted on a few wines, but the focus has always remained the same, showing precision and compression in the wines.

As an Oenology graduate from Adelaide University, Taras developed his craft at wineries such as Two Hands and MSV in the Barossa Valley. He and Amber had worked together making wine for Oenoforos in Sweden crafting primarily Italian wines for the monopoly. California was also a regular vintage destination of Taras and Amber, where they made wines with producers such as Kunin, Bonnacorsi, Arcadian, Schrader, Outpost and the famous Hitching Post’s label, Hartley-Ostini, from the movie ‘Sideways’. The Ochotas took a less is more approach to winemaking and infused their love for music into the wines in both a literal and figurative sense. In fact, the majority of the wines are named after meaningful bands/songs (Fugazi, Slint, I am the Owl, Texture Like Sun, etc.). Figuratively Taras has said that “music and wine are so connected in so many ways, I reckon you can often see the styles of music people like in the wines they make. I like edgy music, rawer, sharper, and my wines tend to be all elbows and knees sticking out. Someone else might like folk music, and they make rustic, countryesque wines. And then you get mainstream big production wines that taste like music that’s been overdubbed and auto-tuned and had things taken out and put back in.”