A wicked new wine from the ever creative and curious Brad Hickey. Whole bunch Cabernet flooded with Nero d'Avola juice for carbonic maceration.
The fruit (50/50) comes from the Brash Higgins Omensetter vineyard adjacent to the winery. These beautifully managed vines are certified organic and biodynamic.
It must be noted that I have a personal connection to this wine...
I assisted Brad during the 2020 vintage. When I arrived this wine was already underway - sealed up doing its thing. Carbonic maceration is such an exciting ferment as you have thousands of micro ferments partying at once inside each berry rather than one big house party as is normally the case. I would plunge this twice a day and the most extraordinary scents would reach out. After some casual chat over the bin one morning with Brad, a name had yet to be established. I threw it out there that it smelt like vanilla ice-cream with a strawberry or raspberry ripple. And that was that. Ripple was the house name, and low and behold, this sample arrives with Ripple on the label. How good! A treasured memory of my time in McLaren Vale 2020.
As for the finished wine? Strawberry and raspberries dance joyously. Medium bodied and having spent five months in ten year old oak, the fruit just sizzles. It's a wine that oozes smash factor with blackcurrant leaf and black cherries seeping through its pores the longer it sits. Wonderfully textural, fine exotic spices curl around the mouth with fine rubs of tannin and a swift heart beat gently pulsating generating a moreish factor which only gains momentum the more you sip.
Only a small quantity was produced with availability in magnums too.
Drink to five years.
93/100
Region: McLaren ValeRRP: $45
Source: Sample
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