Fourth Wall - Meta Gamay Noir

Composition: 100% Gamay Noir

Character

Star pupil. Quite bright, leaning on baskets of strawberries and spilling them everywhere. Cherry Halls, red licorice, firecracker gunsmoke, driftwood, pepper-encrusted meat and plum. A slight hint of stem; Autumn ossification. The nose and palate share similar qualities, but they manifest differently — the bouquet reverberates like echoes in an amphitheatre; in the mouth, it’s like Houdini in a strait-jacket.

Winery & Winemaker

The Malivoire Wine Company; Shiraz Mottiar.

Vineyard Origins

Oppenlaender 57% (Four Mile Creek)

Wiens 20% (Four Mile Creek)

Enns 14% (Four Mile Creek)

Wismer-Foxcroft 9% (Twenty Mile Bench)

Behind the Music

Code Name “Maxell.” I was too young to know the ad for Maxell speakers with the fellow sitting in the chair and the intense music blowing away his living room… nevertheless, some advertising finds its way into our subconscious. When tasting through batch samples with winemaker Shiraz Mottiar, we both professed our desire to create maximum impact.

The four vineyards comprising the blend were selected for energy and intensity. The Oppenlaender fruit in particular was the closest spiritual match to the 2018 Fourth Wall Gamay with beautiful high-tones. Wiens supported with a strawberry-cored structure, and Enns’ old-oak aging brought a little more square-shouldered depth. (Enns being the only barrel-aged component.) But it was maxing out the Wismer-Foxcroft fruit – fermented semi-carbonic in a demijohn – that took everything to 11.

Rock and/or roll.