Noon Winery

Noon Winery is a small family owned winery run by husband and wife team, Drew and Rae Noon. Noon Specializes in full bodied red wine with minimal intervention.

 

The tiny estate is dry farmed biodynamically, though it is not certified and Drew doesn't have any intention of becoming certified. "We don't make a big fuss about it," says Noon. "We've never used any chemicals on our vines. All we have is this open air tractor here. We knew if we sprayed anything on the vineyard we'd just get it straight in the face. These vines are like grandmother's plum tree. They look after themselves, and they grow better without any junk added."

 

Noon's philosophy in the cellar is much the same. The grapes are hand harvested, basket pressed, and fermented in old open-top oak barrels lined with paraffin. Ambient yeasts and no temperature controls mean that the grapes take their own sweet time.

 

Noon is long considered by many as one of the icon wineries of Australia and sell out their limited production every vintage, in 3 weeks, after their release in November.

Eclipse

This is the ‘flagship’ wine for Noon and the selection of the best estate vines. The furthest vine is less than a quarter-mile from the winery/house, thus Drew and Rae have really intimate knowledge of the vineyard annually. 2020 was a vintage of a lot of extremes, but the resulting wines are superb and Drew feels are some of the most intense, and balanced, wines made to date.  Winter was quite dry, but a really wet May was a gift.  Temps began to rise and the rain just never came back and as spring turned to summer, the Noon’s understood that this could be a challenging one.  December broke all sorts of records for heat and drought.  Devastating wildfires broke out in the Adelaide Hills but fortunately McLaren Vale and Langhorne Creek were spared from any fire of smoke issues.  Harvest commenced and then news of the COVID-19 virus began to circulate, adding an unneeded wrinkle to the vintage.  Everyone persevered and the vintage ultimately was a success, albeit with microscopic yields.

The fruit was hand-harvested over three-weeks starting in mid-March. The fruit was destemmed except for about 20% of the Grenache and everything was co-fermented. The fruit was placed into small open oak vats with manual punchdowns to break up the fruit and get fermentation going. After 20 days on skins the wine is pressed by hand in small basket presses with the only the free run juice being used for the wine. The wine is sent to a mixture of 300L French & American barrels as well as 600L French demi-muid and 20hL foudre. Only two new French oak 300L barrels were used for the Shiraz in the aging process with the remaining barrels being between 3-25-years-old. After 18 months the wine was blended to tank and bottled without fining or filtration and just a small addition of sulfur.

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Reserve Cabernet

Grapes for the Noon Reserve Cabernet have been sourced from the same vineyard (the Borrett Family Vineyard in Langhorne Creek) since the first Reserve Cabernet in 1996. Earlier bottlings of this wine; 1993, 1987 and 1986 (when Drew’s father David was the winemaker) were labelled simply as Noon’s Cabernet. This is composed of two blocks:  The Fruit Trees Block and Main Road Block, which are on a deep alluvial soil, with enough clay to retain good moisture and in a site cool enough to ensure slow ripening and high flavor development in the grapes. The resulting wine is a riper style than many, yet has the track record of impeccable aging and balance. There was no 2001, 2008, 2010, 2011, 2013, or 2017 Reserve Cabernet produced due to seasonal conditions.

Hand harvesting of the grapes occurred late in the season. Constant hand plunging throughout the fermentation is used to assist with color and tannin extraction from the grape seeds and skins. At the end of ferment, the wine is pressed using our manual basket presses. Maturation takes place in French oak barriques (225l barrels) for 18 months. Approximately 40% new barrels are used. The wine is crushed, fermented, matured and bottled on the property.

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