Review: Alkimi Whole Bunched Marsanne 2019

August 27, 2020

Getting skin contact/orange wines right is harder than you think. Phenolics, minimal filtration, minimal additions. Many things that can go wrong, and then you need someone to understand the style. It’s enough to drive you up the wall.

This is Upper Yarra Marsanne which is unique in itself. All whole bunches and the juice spends 10 days on skins with zero additions, the wine then matured in barrel where it goes through full malo. It looks like Fanta too, but it’s more like tangy orange juice. Surprisingly there is a real freshness and energy here – sure it’s very tannic, but clean, with minimal volatility and this sense of joyous mandarin/orange peel and apricot ripe fruit driving the palate. Enjoyable drink and interesting – good work Stu.

Best drinking: nowish. 17.7/20, 92/100. 12.5%, $28. Alkimi website. Would I buy it? I’d share a bottle.

2019, Marsanne, Yarra Valley

Andrew Graham was once voted the 23rd most trusted wine critic on the planet. A WCA Journalism Young Gun now old hack with 25yrs as a buyer, judge, journalist, marketer and too much more.

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4 responses to “Review: Alkimi Whole Bunched Marsanne 2019”

Bob

August 27, 2020 at 8:03 pm

And Orange wines are so good with so many cuisines including asian and often curries. A big fan.

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Andrew Graham

August 27, 2020 at 8:36 pm

I really like orange wine. Especially when it’s clean (like this).

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Bob

August 27, 2020 at 8:47 pm

I think there are degrees of “clean”. A little VA is sometimes ok in wine but I find brett a bit hard to take particularly when the second half of the bottle just gets too bretty and you pour it down the sink. Mouse is something I’m still finding hard to get my head around. I don’t have the right mouth chemistry to detect it straight away so sometimes I’ll get a fair way into a bottle before I get it. Other times it hits me early – maybe because of something I’ve eaten which has changed my mouth ph? I buy a reasonable amount of French natural vino from an importer in Melbourne who hangs onto wine until it’s stable & ready for sale, sometimes for over two years and he finds some of the wines get mouse then after a while lose it and it’s fine. So much to learn! I guess that’s why we love it.

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Andrew Graham

August 27, 2020 at 9:32 pm

Agreed Bob. I find VA is only bothersome when it ends up at nail polish remover levels. Schubert didn’t mind a bit of VA so why not? Brett I find distracting even at low levels. Mousiness is the worst, we can all agree on that.

I find the evolution of faults in bottle so fascinating – the brett blooms that wax and wane. The reductiveness that mysteriously blows off. So intriguing.

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