Mr Barval Fine Wines

The philosophy behind their wines and driving their decisions for them is a very classical and traditional one. They are focused on the classic varieties of Margaret River – Cabernet Sauvignon and Chardonnay. They are aiming to produce the wines in a very traditional, old world manner to allow for their own individual voices to be heard most clearly, not to be the bearers of a heavy winery fingerprint. Purity of fruit, balance, elegance and delicacy. These are all focus points for their production. Doing everything possible to achieve fruit quality at harvest as close to perfection as possible is the cornerstone of their fine wines. They work with leading growers located on favourable vineyard sites and do everything they can to ensure the fruit that arrives at the winery is in optimum condition.

So what does this mean exactly?It means that they only work with indigenous yeasts which arrive on the skin of the grapes and bunches from the individual vineyard where they were harvested and then are encouraged to ferment those very same grapes. Through using the traditional technique of making a petit cuvee where a crate or two of perfect bunches, with not a blemish on them, are selectively harvested a week or so prior to harvest and crushed, in this case by hand, and a small and strong ferment begins. This highly active indigenous yeast ferment is added to the rest of the grapes when they arrive at the winery and allows for a sometimes slow to initiate wild ferment to begin far more rapidly. To more practical matters, all of their fruit is processed in a basket press. This is the gentlest way of pressing grapes as there is no tumbling of stalks and skins involved which can extract harsh elements from the grapes themselves. The white grapes are all basket pressed as whole bunches with no destemming occurring at all. The resulting juice, whilst being lower in yield than if you were to destem the fruit, runs from the press truly bright and clear and is immediately transferred to barrels for ferment.