2021 - Our Mate - Riesling

Skin Contact Riesling

Frankland River

Zero additions

1100 bottles made

Pining the loss of a regular release from chief Weirdo Sam
Jorgensen’s other label Old Mate Wine – as his efforts have been
directed elsewhere... We decided to get Sammy to fashion a Skin
Contact Riesling that would fill the It’s Lit sized hole in all of our
hearts. For the uninitiated Old Mate Wine specialised in turning
Frankland River Riesling into sometimes fun, sometimes serious
and sometimes seriously-bloody-serious orange wine – usually
with the help of extended time on skins and his trusty qvevri that
he had brought over from Georgia.

As this is an Old Mate Wine we’ll let Sam do the talking here:
‘A nod to Old Mate Rieslings of yore, in the tradition of throwing ideas at the wall and seeing what sticks. Fruit sourced from the Swinney Vineyard in Frankland River, overseen for the last time in 2021 by the wizard Lee Haselgrove. The vineyard, though not managed organically, is a trusted source given my history with Riesling grown by Lee. Picked mid-March, it eventually found its way to us in the Swan Valley. Bit of botrytis in the fruit, so whilst we have kept all other wines zero/zero this vintage we added 10ppm SO2 to this one when processing. Crushed into Nally bins for 10 days of maceration, a hot ferment being the signature feature of all previous Old Mate Rieslings. I don’t feel you get the full benefit of a balance between phenolic and aromatic extraction unless it’s creeping up to 35C. Pressed to seasoned old oak, and lees stirred every 2-4 weeks (basically whenever I remembered) to encourage yeast autolysis and the integration of the powerful phenolics into the wine. After 8 months in oak it was racked once, had a touch of Riesling raised in stainless blended in to give it that beautiful citrus blossom aromatic
lift, and then bottled with 20ppm SO2.

Along with the blossom there is chamomile, jasmine and marmalade on the nose. The palate buzzes with a lime tonic acid and just restrained enough quinine bitters finish, melded with some exquisite textural almond meal on the mid-palate from the extended time on lees.’ 

The name ‘Our Mate’ is a homage to head winemaker and all-round legend, Sam.