Mornington Peninsula, Victoria – Established in 1981 by Richard and Jill McIntyre, Moorooduc Estate is a small, family-run winery that has developed an enviable reputation for complex and food-friendly wines. The core belief at Moorooduc is that the fundamental quality and character of fine wine comes from the vineyard where the grapes are grown.
In the winery, the emphasis is on gentle handling of the fruit and natural wine making methods with some quality control. For the white wines, the freshly picked whole bunches are gravity fed into the press where a program designed for a sparkling wine base is used to separate the juice from the skins, pips and stems. The (cloudy) juice from the press is not settled but transferred to the fermentation vessel – almost always oak barrels. Fermentation occurs naturally (wild yeasts) and the wine remains on lees until it is assembled for final treatments such as fining and bottling. More often than not, a natural malolactic fermentation takes place in barrel.
For the red wines, the whole bunches of grapes are cooled and (usually) de-stemmed but not crushed, and dropped directly into our two-ton open fermenters, thus avoiding the need to pump must. After four to six days of maceration, the primary (wild yeast) fermentation begins. This takes about a week to complete with the temperature peaking at about 93º Fahrenheit. A few more days on skins completes a total maceration time of 19-21 days when the new wine is pressed and, after a day or two to settle out the gross lees, it is transferred to barrel. A natural malolactic fermentation occurs in the following spring. The wine is racked only once when it is assembled and prepared for bottling.
- Chardonnay Mornington Peninsula
- Pinot Gris On Skins Mornington Peninsula
- Pinot Noir Mornington Peninsula