This Month
2009 Velvet Glove WA Review & Magnum Offer
News from Mollydooker
Happy New Year to you all!
2011 has certainly arrived with a bang. Our friends in Queensland are experiencing some of the worst floods ever with serious damage and loss of life. There will be some flooding in South Australia as the water works its way down the river systems but it is not expected to be anything like as serious. Our hearts go out to everyone who is suffering.
Sarah, Sparky, Luke and Holly have been back in Cambodia for the official opening of Mollydooker 2. Here they are with the Transform Cambodia Team. These are the staff who care for, nurture and teach the kids to become great future leaders in Cambodia. The Christmas party was a huge success in a country which doesn’t allow public gatherings. 4000 people turned up.
Thank you to everybody who has purchased Sip it Forward – you are making a difference in the lives of 200 children and their families.
Viticulture and Vineyards
We had a get together with our growers in December so that we could show them all the improvements we have made in the winery and go over the Marquis Vineyard Watering Program™ with their new vineyard staff. We usually find that new staff become extremely concerned at this time of the year when their vines begin to show signs of stress. However we probably needn’t have worried this year because we have had so much rain that it is a jungle out there! Never mind, it was a great excuse to party and for them to be able to taste the fabulous 2009 wines which their grapes went into.
Despite the wet weather the vines are starting to transition from canopy growth to shoot and grape ripening and we should be moving into veraison pretty soon. We have taken all of the fruit off the younger vines so that the vines concentrate their energy on forming a strong framework and deep roots.
Winemaking
We’ve done the initial grading of the 2010 wines and have started to blend them together. The great news is that almost all of the wines have graded at above 65% so there is going to be plenty to go around this year. And we know already that we are going to be producing the whole range – for the first time ever I have seen two tanks of Velvet Glove material, so that is exciting. And the first blend of the Carnival of Love is looking very special this year. My personal favourites are usually the Party wines, Gigglepot and Blue Eyed Boy, I just love the delicious rich fruit flavours that comes from the cooler climates that the grapes usually come from. But the 2010 COL seems to have all that gorgeous flavour plus the extra length and intensity of the higher fruit weight wines.
The wines are not actually showing at their best right now. They have 10% too much oak, because that is the amount which will be lost when the wines are filtered, and the extra oak suppresses the fruit flavour. So if you are visiting us (and this is a great time to visit because we get to wander around helping ourselves to wines from the tanks), we will always finish up tasting a finished wine from the previous vintage so that you an see the huge difference that is made during the final stages of the winemaking. That is when you see the rich flavours and soft, voluptuous silkiness which are typical of Sarah and Sparky’s wines.
Great news, we have just received a fabulous review for the Velvet Glove from Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate.
Mollydooker 2009 Velvet Glove Shiraz: 97+ points
‘The 2009 Velvet Glove is 100% Shiraz matured in American oak, 97% new. Very deep garnet purple colored, it gives intense warm blackberry, choco-mint, smoked bacon and marmite-toast aromas with nuances of coffee, roasted nuts and vanilla. Floral notes of violets and potpourri emerge after a few minutes. Very rich, very crisp, concentrated and full, there’s a good backbone of firm, very fine tannins and crisp acid leading into the very long and layered finish. This is a very well balanced, structured wine that should begin to open-out with 2-3 years in bottle, drinking 2014 to 2024+.’ – Lisa Perrotti-Brown, www.erobertparker.com
Just Released – Velvet Glove Magnums (1.5L)
We loved the Velvet Glove so much ourselves that we decided this year we would bottle some magnums, as so many of you had been asking for them. They are bottled in the magnum version of the VG bottle, and each magnum is beautifully packaged in its own Velvet Glove Box, and suspended in a Clearview shipper. They have been hand waxed and packed. We have managed to keep the price to $399, with shipping included. We didn’t do many, so they are only available on the website. We won’t be doing any next year, so if a magnum of Velvet Glove is something that you would like to have, please be sure not to miss out. Click here to order.
An Apology
We noticed that there was a glitch in our system and if you joined our mailing list in the last few months, you didn’t receive a letter from us welcoming you as a Mollydooker Mate. Aaaargh! We are so sorry. Please accept this as a very belated welcome. We value you and appreciate your joining us.
Thank you so much all of you for your emails and phone calls. We count ourselves very lucky to have you as our friends.
Please come and visit us if you are over here. We are open on weekdays by appointment, and we love to show you around. If you are wondering why the email is from me, and not from Sarah and Sparky, just check out the photo. They are having a wonderful time in Beaver Creek!
Once again a very happy and safe 2011 to you all.
Janet (mum)
PS the HOLIDAYS special has finished, and details have been taken down from the website, but until Friday 22nd January, if you put the code HOLIDAYS into your order at checkout, you will still receive the 10% savings, and MollyClub members will still receive their additional MollyClub benefit.
PPS I have been stocktaking, and have discovered some exciting stocks of our older wines we can have a play with. Am just putting it all together, and will then try and think up some fun offers.
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