Victoria’s St Leonards Vineyard has entered the natural wine arena with Marsie, a marsanne-muscat skin contact blend.
It’s the first release under the Pilot Project side label for off-centre wines created by winemaker Nick Brown of Rutherglen wineries St Leonards and All Saints.
“Sometimes I make random batches of wine and don’t tell anyone!” Brown told Drinks Adventures.
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Brown’s interest in minimal intervention wine was piqued last year when he tasted a South Australian orange wine.
“It was such an interesting and textural wine. I came home and started thinking about what we could use in a blend like that,” Brown says.
Brown, a fourth-generation winemaker, owns St Leonards and All Saints with siblings Eliza and Angela.
The family has been growing muscat in the region since 1920, and marsanne since 1959.
Marsie is 75 per cent marsanne and 25 percent muscat. “Muscat is super floral — it actually smells grapey, like those old-school pink musk sticks,” says Brown, adding that marsanne balances these characteristics with more delicate flavours and aromas.
Both varieties were handpicked, crushed and co-fermented for ten days on skins. One-third of the wine was barrel-aged for three months in seasoned French oak, with the rest in stainless-steel tanks. Bottled unfiltered with minimal sulphur, Brown says it is best consumed within a year.
St Leonards Marsie is available online, from the cellar door, and through independent bottle shops with an RRP of $32. It’s a small-batch release, with only 160 cases made.
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