Barrel Selection: Intentional, Incidental, or What?

With more than a quarter-century of growing and making wine behind Malivoire, our traditional wines, those that form the heart of our portfolio, have become well-established.  But within that heart beats another, living through barrel selections, those rare anomalies that, every once in a while, arc briefly across our firmament.

These don’t receive a lot of explanation; their volume is low, and they aren’t in our portfolio for long.  With that in mind, Malivoire Winemaker Elisa Mazzi, and Team Principal (and Winemaker-mentor) Shiraz Mottiar, were asked to explain the how-and-why of these occasional jewels.

Q:                      How do barrel-selected wines begin, by discovery or by design?

Shiraz:               Discovery!  Every time!  But when we taste through our cellar, we’re always aware something unexpected and intriguing could be hiding there. 

Elisa:                  You can’t plan it or make it happen.  Barrel selections are spontaneous, not to be confused with Demo Series wines, which are often explorations of alternate winemaking techniques. 

We don’t make many.  Sometimes none, and at most three or four selections from a vintage.  These are standouts we find in blind cellar tastings, things we didn’t anticipate or find right away, but developed while ageing.  They are barrels that show similar complexity, or compatibility, or some other quality that inspires.  They might impress us with their purity, the way they will capture a season or a moment in a particular vineyard.

Shiraz:                Usually, it’s the discovery of a single barrel that grabs our attention, one that shows exceptional fruit character that has not been obscured by oak, although the oak may contribute.  Other variables might come into play.  If a site was picked in multiple passes over different days, or if some fruit was whole cluster fermented and some was destemmed, we’ll divide the grapes to vinify in separate lots.  We can explore one exceptional barrel of wine on its own, or we might see if we can find one or two more that can assemble a great blend. 

Our most recent example is Cat on the Bench Pinot Noir.  When we barrel-sampled Pinot from the 2022 harvest, we found something really interesting and unusual was developing in the barrels from two young vineyard blocks, one from the Moira Vineyard and one from the Estate.   

Elisa:                   It wasn’t a lot, and it never is.  We’ll separate at most one-to-three barrels, oak or stainless steel, from the rest to blend and bottle.  In the case of ’22 Cat Pinot, we had an idea where the wine wanted to go, and we found two barrels that, put together, helped it get there.

Question:          2022 is on record for an exceptional growing season.  Are barrel-selected wines only made from near-ideal vintages?

Elisa:                   Definitely, not!  We need to respect difficult vintages because they may hold surprises… rewarding ones.

Shiraz:                Difficult vintages mean stress in a vineyard, and stress can create magic!