2016 Bye's Pinot noir
'16 Review by Tamlyn Currin
Liffey Valley must be one of the tiniest producers in Tasmania, if not Australia. It proved impossible to track them down for a visit, much to my disappointment – along with being organic since 1991, they seem to shun any form of technology (no website, no email address, no phone numbers) along with communication from the outside world. Liffey Valley has only one hectare (2.5 acres) of vineyard, planted solely to Pinot Noir. The vineyard is in the foothills of the Great Western Tiers at an elevation of 300 m. It is totally surrounded by native forests and completely uncontaminated by any pollutants from traffic, farming or industry. Compost grown, hand tended, hand picked, and vinified with minimal intervention. I found one bottle of this in a tiny independent wine shop in Tasmania. Screwcap.
Black cherries and the scent of gingerbread just baked and at the very edges beginning to turn sugar-burnt brown. The smell of dark humus-rich earth. It tastes of rain and dried cranberries, of wet forest floor and mushrooms and autumn. A wine that reminds me of a spider's web in early morning – a kind of fragile strength, catching milky sunlight in spell-bound dew drops, close to the ground, taut from one blade of grass to another, lace and snowflake and precision and so fine you hardly notice it. I can taste Darjeeling tea leaves, sifting through tannins as translucent and silky as dragonfly wings. Maya Angelou once wrote about a singer that 'she carried the music in her body as if it were a private thing, given into her care and protection'. That would make a better tasting note than anything I could write. I would go to great lengths to find another bottle of Liffey Valley Pinot Noir. (TC)”
By tamlyn currin