About This Vineyard
When two men met in a small village in France in the Burgundy wine region, they were instantly connected through their passion for Pinot Noir. This friendship has bloomed into a partnership producing a collection of both Fine West Australian and Burgundian wines. Pascal Marchand, Burgundian winemaker from Domaine Comte Armand and Domaine De La Vougeraie and Jeff Burch, vigneron and owner of Howard Park and MadFish Wines released their first vintage in 2007, with a hand-crafted organic Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Shiraz from carefully selected fruit parcels in both Margaret River and the Great Southern Wine region.
We aim to produce a selection of fine organic wines that express individual personalities, reflective of where they have come from and how they are grown. We have selected only the very best vine clones and vineyard sites with good aspects, ancient soils and ideal altitude. We have also endeavoured to follow the best viticultural practices to have low yields of high quality fruit. Some of the vineyards biodynamic while others are organic with the aim of eventual certification.
The winemaking is traditional, yet modern with minimal intervention to allow the wines to become true expressions of their natural source. Our winemaking efforts are organised around the lunar calendar for barrel fermentation, wine movement, barrel stirring and bottling. This bio-dynamic method of using the lunar calendar is followed from the vineyard right through to the bottling process. This method has been introduced by Pascal who is a firm believer in the positive results he has witnessed using these techniques over many years in Burgundy.
Chardonnay is whole bunch pressed and put to barrel with a natural ferment and left to ferment dry. The best new oak are used but with a balance of one and two year old barrels so the oak is integrated but not dominant over the fruit for flavours. The finest wine from the barrels is then selected and blended for bottling. The red grapes are hand-picked, hand-sorted and placed in small open fermenters, allowing cold soak maceration to improve the structure of the wine. The juice is then allowed to ferment naturally, followed by basket-pressing and then left to rest in new 100% French oak.