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Luscious.
Maker's Notes: Pale Gold is a fortified white wine made from Verdelho and Semillon grapes. It is quite sweet with more than half of the original grape sugars intact. This is achieved by fortification with neutral grape spirit to achieve an alcohol level of 15% by volume. At that alcohol and sugar level, the wine is incapable of further fermentation and is quite stable. To ensure that the fermentation ends cleanly, the fortifying spirit must be well mixed and it is our habit to chill the wine quickly and filter closely. Pale Gold is an old style of wine because fortifieds have been made for centuries but it is made better, cleaner and less alcoholic by recourse to modern technology.
Verdelho is a Portuguese grape from the Island of Madeira used with another grape variety called Sercial to produce the Madeira wines. In Madeira, heating of the must to promote evaporation is an age old practice used to concentrate the sugars. Our dry climate achieves much the same result with probably less damage to the fruit flavours. Madeira is a wine which was much favoured on the East Coast of America centuries ago when it was often shipped with a cargo of African slaves, but little of it finds its way to Australian shores today.
Pale Gold ages well in bottle and can produce a more luscious and intense drink at ten years, quite different to the sweet grapey extract it is in its youth.
This wine style is similar but less alcoholic than White Port. Our preference is for less alcohol because we think it tastes better.
The name Pale Gold is inspired by the experience of reading Tolkien's 'The Hobbit' to our children. It is the sort of wine that Badger might have kept in his pantry to welcome lost friends who stumbled on his door in the depths of winter, scared witless by the creatures of the Wild Wood. The same book must have caught the imagination of a number of property owners in Wildwood Road as you will no doubt observe.
Current Vintage 2006
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