Halliday Article in The Weekend Australian Magazine

This year we are celebrating 40 years in the wine industry. On a blustery weekend in September we gathered a bunch of unsuspecting friends and family and convinced them to spend two days planting five acres of vines. Their payment? A lunch provided by matriarch Marg, plus the satisfaction of being a part of something that would be the source of much pleasure for years to come; both for those who enjoy Crittenden wines but also for the now extended family and wider team who are a part of the operation. 

It was by pure coincidence that on the actual weekend, quite literally, an article appeared in The Weekend Australian Magazine by James Halliday. James reflected on the evolution of Crittenden since 1982 and captured our spirit of change and sustainability beautifully.

He also provided three impressive wine reviews, including 96 points for the new 2020 Cri de Coeur Pinot Noir. You can read each wine review below:

Click here to view a copy of the article or read the full article via subscription here. 

12/09/2022 at 11:02 AM Permalink

Halliday Wine Companion 2023 Results & Reviews

The Halliday Wine Companion 2023 was released on 4 August 2022.

The Halliday Wine Companion 2023 was released on 4 August 2022 and we were thrilled to learn we had retained our Red Five Star Winery Rating and achieved five gold medal scores and eight silver medal scores.

This year wines from the Mornington Peninsula region were reviewed by Jane Faulkner for the 2023 companion. The  Cri de Coeur wines featured will be available to purchase from 27 August 2022.

Here are some of the highlights...
 

2017 Crittenden Cri de Coeur Savagnin Sous Voile - 97 Points, Gold
Bearing witness to a wine’s creation – as in tasting all since its inception in 2011 and understanding the story behind sous voile – allows a picture to form. Winemaker Matt Campbell is credited with kickstarting the revolution à la Jura at Crittenden Estate and all I can say is, thank you. Oh and ’17, the finest to date. Spending nearly 4 years under flor and matched to an excellent vintage has created a complex, savoury and utterly compelling wine. Expect a harmony of grilled almonds, toffee praline, salted lemons, poached quince with mouth-watering, heady aldehydes. The palate is incredibly silky and long, yet has lots of tangy acidity too; it’s elegant and importantly, ultra-fresh and alive. What a wine. Alas, just 800 bottles made.

Crittenden Cri de Coeur Macvin #3 - 96 Points, Gold

The 3rd rendition is created with a blend of 50% flor-aged savagnin from the excellent 2017 vintage and savagnin grape juice from 2021, fortified with grape spirit then left in barrel for 10 months. It’s come together superbly. An enticing amber hue with dried pears, toast and honey, then pear juice and toasted pain d’épice flavours tantalise. The palate is luscious and sweet yet balanced with acidity; there's a fine if slippery texture across the palate. Hard to put the glass down.

2020 Crittenden Cri de Coeur Chardonnay - 95 Points, Gold

Whole-bunch pressed to French oak barriques (60% new) for wild ferment, 80% undergoing mlf, and 11 months' aging. I can only imagine how tight and linear this would be without the mlf and new oak, as it’s still taut and bristling with nervous energy. It needs more time to add some flesh to its fine shape. A hint of grilled nuts and creamy lees bind to the lemon and white nectarine flavours. Racy across the palate thanks to the acidity, which keeps this bright and the finish long.

2021 Crittenden Estate Pinot Gris - 95 Points, Gold

It’s always a go-to gris, because aside from the varietal inputs, it’s a terrific drink. Honeysuckle, ginger spice, nashi pear and lemon-cream tart. Luscious across the palate, yet finishes with a gentle acid freshness.

2021 Crittenden OGGI - 95 Points, Gold

Oggi, (Italian for 'today'), can be made to the whim of the winemakers, experimenting with different varieties and/or techniques each vintage – small-batch winemaking, really. For ’21, it is a blend of 62/38% pinot grigio/white muscat, vinified separately, on skins for 2 weeks, fermented wild, aged in used barriques for 10 months, mlf, then blended just before bottling. It’s a coppery orange colour and so fragrant (via the muscat) with honeysuckle, musk, lychee and a burst of spices. The palate has plenty of grip, a sway of phenolics adding texture and intrigue, plus flavours of blood orange and Angostura bitters. It's super-dry. A fabulous aperitif style. Bravo.

09/08/2022 at 2:49 PM Permalink

A bunch of recent reviews

We've been receiving reviews for our Peninsula, Kangerong and The Zumma ranges that we'd like to share with you. We've popped them into a PDF for easy viewing....

www.crittendenwines.com.au/assets/client/File/Reviews/CE_Reviews_08Jul22.pdf

10/07/2022 at 2:49 PM Permalink

Comté and vin jaune: An Australian winemaker's tribute to Jura

Read Max Allen's article published in The Australian Financial Review on Friday, 8 July 2022.

Read the full article here.

You will enjoy reading the full article, but we'd like to share a few snippets with you prior to the release of our Cri de Coeur wines in August 2022.

The first vintage of the Sous Voile savagnin at Crittenden Estate was in 2011, and it came about by accident - or rather, by expedience.

Back in the early-2000s, the Crittendens - like dozens of other Australian winemakers - had planted a few rows of a promising alternative Spanish white grape variety called albarino at their Peninsula vineyard. Except it wasn't albarino. In 2009, a visiting French grapevine specialist broke the news to them at what they had in their vineyards was in fact savagnin. From the Jura.

But Crittenden Estate assistant winemaker Matt Campbell knew what to do with the now correctly identified grapes.

"It was serendipitous," says Campbell. "I'd tasted vin jaune on a trip to France a few years before: visiting a friend one day. I was sitting on the swing in the back garden when her in-laws brought out this Comté and a bottle of vin jaune. I tasted them together and thought holy crap, what's this?"

...

Which is why, in 2011, Campbell left a barrel of the Crittenden dry white savagnin un-sulphured, which encouraged a veil of flor yeast to grow on the surface of the wine inside the cask.

...

Not surprisingly given its unusual character, Sous Voile [savagnin] is a wine that took time to build a following. But recent vintages have attracted serious critical acclaim. The 2016 was named Best Drink in Australia at the 2021 Drink Easy Awards in Adelaide, judged against other wines, spirits, beers, etc - and it now sells out every year, with demand outstripping supply.

“It’s been amazing,” says (Rollo) Crittenden. “Absolutely amazing. As a wine that started out as a mistake, it’s one of the greatest mistakes that has ever happened to us.”

2017 Crittenden Estate Cri de Coeur Savagnin Sous Voile
Despite the extended ageing "under veil", this wine is still bursting with plenty of gorgeous grapey, tangy savagnin fruit, all intense fleshy yellow peach and a line of citrus, with the yeasty flor notes more a background hum than foreground feature. Beautiful now, but will also age gracefully: the 2013 is slowly becoming more savoury, more complex, developing layers and layers of yeasty flavour, with years ahead of it, and I see the 2017 maturing in a similar way.

2020 Crittenden Cri de Coeur Chardonnay
It wasn’t only savagnin-based wines that we tasted with Jacques Reymond’s food: this vivid, lemony chardonnay was also exquisitely paired by the chef with a dish called La Pôchouse, from the chef’s village of Cuiseaux in Jura – a perfectly baked piece of John Dory in a sorrel sauce, the just-set richness of the fish proteins and tanginess of the sharp-tasting sorrel a perfect match with the wine.

Crittenden Estate Cri de Coeur Macvin #3
This is the third release of the Crittenden version of Macvin, a sweet-yet-savoury wine served as an apéritif or with dessert in Jura. The Crittendens make theirs by blending dry, flor-aged Cri de Coeur savagnin with fresh golden savagnin grape juice, adding a little neutral spirit, and ageing the resulting blend in barrels before bottling. Raisiny and caramel-rich, but also a little briny and yeasty, thanks to the flor component, it was lovely with Reymond’s Macvin-flavoured crème brulée. It’s also great with a Vache Qui Rit toastie.

08/07/2022 at 9:15 AM Permalink

Top 100 Australian Wines

Our Cri de Coeur came in at number 76 out of his top 100 Australian wines.

Pretty good! James Suckling is a US wine writer - and is very well respected. To make his top 100 is a great achievement. This is what James had to say:

Rollo Crittenden is not afraid to play the long game, and so he nestled this wine under flor for three years in untopped barrels, a mode known as “sous-voile” in France’s Jura region.  The result is a wildly complex yet precise white that has clear, savory, flor-derived characterwith lemon peel and toasted almond. Fragrant dried brown spices, too. The palate rings  clear with a fresh flush of acidity and briny, mineral tones to the zesty lemon flavors, aheadof a smoothly nutty twist to close. So much to like here. Drink now. 96 points

James Suckling

TOP 100 Wines of Australia 2021

17/02/2022 at 2:02 PM Permalink