quicksearch
86POINTS
15½/20
Ochota Barrels She's Lost Control Fragola 2018
Piccadilly Valley, Adelaide Hills, Mount Lofty Ranges, Adelaide, South Australia, AustraliaWhat's fragola, you ask? Well, based on my initial note on this wine, it tastes like a cross between Welch's grape jelly, flat ale and sour lemon. When I learned this medium-hued of the fragola grape was a Vitis labrusca, all made more sense. Fragola = strawberry grape. There is very little of it planted in Oz, and Taras Ochota only has three short rows to work, which makes two to three barrels. The vines were found in a tiny vineyard in the Piccadilly Valley, planted from canes smuggled in from Calabria in the 1980's to provide for a migrant family’s wine consumption needs. After destemming and native ferment, this was basket pressed to French barriques for a short stint, and bottled unfined and unfiltered. In Taras' opinion, these are "The weirdest grapes I’ve worked with, the weirdest wine I’ve made." Which is saying something for this super avant guard naturalist winemaker. Best with a brisk chill, this dry wine shares jube-jubes, strawberry leather, sour ale, puckering acidity, and negligible tannins to a short finish. I tasted bottle 101 of 488. A curiosity, and also curious: why the natural cork here?Tasted: 08 February 2019Tasted by: Treve RingPrices:| BC | $50.00 | 750ml | private wine shops |
The Living Vine
Grape: FragolaCSPC: 217310
