Octopus 2017 Fiano Riverland
Rich savoury white with aged complexity
Lifted florals, honey and crushed hazelnuts with the creaminess of panna cotta
Baked pear, white peach and a hint of spice with a luscious, savoury and rich finish
Savoury, creamy, fresh and vegan friendly
Drink me with peanut butter on toast
If you are a fan of Pinot Gris or medium weight Riesling, then you have to give Fiano a try! It’s full of citrus, stonefruit and summer blossoms with a bit more weight than Vermentino and so sits between a Pinot Grigio and a Chardonnay. The cool thing about Fiano is that you can also make it in so many different ways!
This one was made 100% in barrel. After being hand picked in the dead cool of the morning, it was hand sorted to get rid of any insect travellers or other such curiosities, shovelled out of the picking bin into an old school basket press where we had to use all our force to squeeze those grapes into juice. Then after lunch, we transferred the juice into old French oak barriques and let the ferment kick off naturally in it’s own time. Once it got going, there was no temperature control, apart from some forklifting of the barrels in and out of the sun if the fermenting wine was looking like it was getting too cold and slowing down a bit. We did do some lees stirring (so all that means is that we stirred up the dead yeast cells) to give the wine more mid palate weight and creaminess, otherwise it would have been a bit too one dimensional and tanky.
After ferment was done and the wine was dry, we left the juice sit on the gross lees (all the dead yeast cells) because the amazing thing about dead yeast cells is that after they die (starvation actually as they have munched up all the sugar in the juice and there is nothing left for them to eat), they keep on working even though they are dead! How cool is that! It’s a process called autolysis - for you wine geeks out there - and what happens is that when dead yeast cells are breaking down, they give out components that actually mop up any oxygen that is in the wine, preserving it naturally so that you don’t have to add any sulphur, especially whilst it’s going through malolactic fermentation. Amazing!
The end result is a wine that has both the lemony peachy flavours but also has some creamy weight and a lovely savoury finish. This is a cheese platter wine, something you might start on whilst you are cooking dinner. If you are not a pre-dinner nibbles type of person and like to go straight to main course, then this Fiano is perfect with fish and chicken made in creamy, white wine sauce with plenty of butter. Yup. It’s an obviously food match, but it works!
