2017 Farrside Pinot Noir

Smells like cold-brewed oolong tea leaves, damsons, bresaola, wet chalk. Smells like burying your nose in a jugful of stocks and hollyhocks. But I cannot any more describe what it tastes like than I could name the paint shades that Claude Monet (‘colour is my day long obsession, joy and torment’) used in his artwork . Liquid chiaroscuro. A wine that glows in the mouth. It could be as blue as Monet’s Rouen cathedral, for all its pulsating intensity, its indescribable beauty. Perhaps its damsons, perhaps its toasted orange peel and hibiscus petals and chanterelles and truffle. It’s all that, but that almost doesn’t matter. This silk-slip wine is the kind of wine that should make you put your laptop away. It’s a wine that deserves your whole presence. (TC)