South Australia’s Fleurieu Peninsula gives its name to a wine zone embracing the warm McLaren Vale and Langhorne Creek regions ? source of generous ripe wines. But the peninsula juts further south, swinging westward into the Great Southern Ocean, producing towards its tip the significantly cooler, wetter climate that lured Brian Croser into planting pinot noir in 2003. This is the second Tapanappa wine from those young vines ? and it makes a strong case for Croser’s choice of site. It’s early days yet, and we?ll have to see how the wines mature. But right now it’s a gem ? fragrant, finely sculpted and lusciously flavoured, featuring bright fruit notes as well as savouriness and with loads of soft, persistent tannins giving structure.
