Sangreal by Farr Pinot Noir

Sangreal is consistently made with 70 per cent whole bunch and aged in 70 percent new oak. It is fermented in a five-tonne oak barrel with an open-top fermenter, and cold soaked for four days before a natural fermentation of seven to nine days. Once the cap falls, the tank is pressed. The wine is racked only once after malolactic fermentation, then sulphured and bottled, the entire process taking a total of 18 months. The wine is unfined and unfiltered in order to retain its natural flavour and bouquet. Sangreal is the most seamless and perfumed of the three single-vineyard pinots. - Nick Farr 

This wine has quite an intense nose on opening, seemingly angular, but it softens quite quickly.  The ’22 Sangreal is garnet in the glass, offering a decidedly pretty visual.  There’s a confident yet restrained perfume as expected from this site, and it works in tandem with more forward stemmy notes; a welcoming and expected house style.  There is a silky element to the Sangreal’s palate, maybe just a perception of smoothness after trying other wines.  The nose has a warmer spice note, more clove or nutmeg, but nothing so precise as either of those, just the comforting warmth of high-end oak.  Lovely acidity, not overbearing, incredibly fine tannins make this perhaps too easy to drink, but that’s surely the point.  It is all too easy to become non plussed when you see these wines often, so I find it helpful, or perhaps the better description is feeling grounded, to try other Pinot Noir and see just how far from ‘normal’ these wines are. - Ben Knight, By Farr