Description
TASTING NOTES:
Nose — Citrust. Yellow peach. Pineapple.
Palate — Succulent. Textural. Lively.
Drink — Within 2-7 years.
TECHNICAL DATA:
Alc – 14.5%
TA – 6.4 g/L
RS – <1g/L
pH 3.42
Harvest date: 30.03 & 05.04.2022
Time in barrel: 11 months
VITICULTURE:
Described as a year where average growers shone and good growers excelled, Vintage 2022 will be remembered for being close to the perfect season: a lack of frost and wind, warm and wet at the start with a protracted hot dry spell in the middle and a long cool ripening period. Overall a very warm season, small bunch numbers with big berries the fruit was clean and tasty!
— Grower, James Dicey
WINEMAKER'S NOTES:
We harvested our Inlet Chardonnay in two tranches: firstly clone 548, then second B95 and 809 clones, Black Rabbit Mendoza came in at the same time as the first of the Inlet clones, all were foot trodden left overnight then whole bunch pressed straight to barrel. Fermented with indigenous years, unstirred until after malolactic fermentation in spring, at which point they were stirred weekly. 75% Malolactic fermentation, 20% new oak puncheons. Bottled unfined, filtered in late March 2023.
— Grower, Matt Dicey
Producer Profile
DICEY WINES
Take a chance. Roll the dice.
Wine is about place. Dicey is a place that is a rocky pocket of Central Otago: Bannockburn. It’s not easy to make wine here. Hoar frosts. Wind. Bitter cold and crackling heat. The land is unforgiving and the wines express that struggle.
The fruit comes from three vineyards started by three families transcending two generations. James and Odelle have The Inlet. Matt and Ali belong to Black Rabbit. Their pioneering parents, Robin and Margi, own their Swansong.
Dicey Bannock burn wines pay homage. They tell the annual story of the region and share the colours of each season. The Single Vineyard wines have an even sharper focus.
LAND
The land was arid and deserted. The brothers made wine.
On first approach, Bannockburn seems brown but it’s cut by a myriad of colours. James’ partner Odelle, an artist, took her paint brush and went wandering to capture the palette — to share what can be seen when you really know the land. These colours form part of the language of Dicey.
The brothers want to tell their story in all its complexity. A story that captures the essence of collaboration and conflict, struggle and reward, work and play, family and rocky ground.
There is a diametrical synergy between Odelle’s soft, coloured brush strokes and the pleasing strike the landscape provides with its severity. There’s a playfulness about the name Dicey too. The very idea of making wine in a place like that.
BROTHERS
James is the grower, Matt, the caretaker. Two brothers. Two neighbours. James and Matt live and work side by side. The middle where they meet can be a place of inspiration and friction. ‘Unpredictable and potentially risky’
dictionary definition for the word Dicey. Fierce about wine, family and Bannockburn — the land where they’ve put down roots. Wine runs deep for the Diceys. In the dirt and in the veins.
‘Unpredictable and potentially risky’
dictionary definition for the word Dicey.
