Q. Do women really have a more acute sense of smell and taste?
Q. Can I join the Amietta Mailing List?
Q. Apart from Amietta red wines, do you have any personal favourites from other Australian producers?
Q. Can I visit the Amietta Cellar Door?
Q. Can I find Amietta wines in other retail outlets?
Q. Can I order Amietta wines and have them delivered to countries outside Australia?
Q. How much wine does Amietta produce each year?
Q. Who makes the wine at Amietta?
Q. Why does Amietta use screw caps instead of corks?
Q. Can wines age and develop under screw caps - doesn't the wine need air to age?
Q. Do you really tread the grapes with your feet? Isn't that unhygienic?
Q. Do you have a wholesale distributor?
Q. Do women really have a more acute sense of smell and taste?
A. Yes Janet, they do. Generally speaking, women have a lower threshold for perception of typical wine aromas/flavours than most men. That is, they can detect aromas/flavours at lower concentrations. With the same palate training, women generally are more accurate and consistent judges of wine quality than men are. "So …" you ask, "why is it that most of the wine makers, wine judges and wine writers are male?"
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Q. Can I join the Amietta Mailing List?
A. Yes, we currently have an open mailing list. Mailing list customers have the first opportunity to taste the new releases and are eligible for museum releases and other special offers. Orders are filled sequentially until the wines are sold out – first come, first served. More details
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Q. Apart from Amietta red wines, do you have any personal favourites from other Australian producers?
A. Our preference is always for wines that are made with passion and committment and taste clearly of the place where they are grown (terroir) - like the wines we produce at Amietta. Obviously, this means single vineyard wines where the grapes are grown and wine is made by the same people. Because it fills the above criteria and is excellent quality at a reasonable price, our consistent personal favourite is Best’s Bin O Shiraz, cellared for a couple of years. Otherwise … well, over the last few years Amietta red wines have received ratings from James Halliday of 94 and 95/100, so you could go for any of the other single vineyard wines that are similarly rated. For example, Clonakilla Hilltops Shiraz, Grant Burge Meshach, Torbreck RunRig, Torbreck The Struie, By Farr Shiraz, Mitolo Savitar Shiraz and Yering Station Reserve Yarra Valley Shiraz Viogner. They’re all pretty good.
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Q. Can I visit the Amietta Cellar Door?
A. Our cellar door is open on the first Sunday of each month and on other times/days by appointment. See the Cellar Door page for details.
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Q. Can I find Amietta wines in other retail outlets?
A. Due to our micro scale production we mainly sell directly to mailing list customers and a handfull of quality restaurants. However we do supply a small amount of wine to Dan Murphy's (Geelong West store only) and Randall the Wine Merchant (Geelong West and Albert Park). Go to the 'Buy Wine' page for details.
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Q. Can I order Amietta wines and have them delivered to countries outside Australia?
A. Yes. We have mailing list customers in a number of overseas countries and deliver to them by air freight using special insulated foam shipping boxes. Contact us .... for freight rates and delivery times.
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Q. How much wine does Amietta produce each year?
A. Our production is currently just 450 cases of wine per year, so we might be called a micro-mini producer. On our six and a half acre vineyard, there are blocks of young vines not yet in production, so this volume will eventually grow to around 600 or 700 cases.
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Q. Who makes the wine at Amietta?
A. Janet Cockbill, Nicholas Clark and their young sons Rory and Liam make the wine from the ground up. With help from friends and family they dug the holes and planted the vines, then fed and nurtured them until they were strong enough to grow intensely flavoured grapes. That’s the way it goes, from planting to growing, right through to pruning, picking, crushing, foot-treading, pressing, fermenting, aging and blending. Finally a mobile bottling truck comes and we bottle on-site at Amietta.
It’s a hands-on, hand-made operation that is about as far from the industrial wine factories as it’s possible to be. And you can taste the difference.
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Q. Why does Amietta use screw caps rather than corks?
A. Because they do a better job. No one would accept a bottle of soft drink, a bottle of milk or a bottle of beer that was ‘sealed’ with something as un-hygienic and poorly performing as a cork. Cork sealed wines are frequently diminished or ruined by ‘cork taint’ or from premature oxidation because the cork has failed to seal the bottle properly.
At Amietta we use Stelvin/screw caps on all our wines – reds, whites and rosés. We strive to produce wine of the highest quality, and screw caps mean that there’s no loss of quality after bottling due to failure of the closure or by contamination of the wine by TCA (cork-taint compound produced by microbes in the cork). Screw caps allow us to be confident that every bottle in a batch is as good as the next, and the next, and the next.
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Q. Can wines age and develop under screw caps - doesn't the wine need air to age?
A. Wine scientists long ago proved that the ageing and development of wine after bottling is an anaerobic process – that is, no air is required. It was demonstrated that when wine was hermetically sealed in glass ampoules, it still aged and developed perfectly. Screw caps do what every wine closure is supposed to do. They seal the wine in and keep the air out.
Ralph Kyte-Powell (wine reviewer in the Age Newspaper Epicure section) told Amietta co-winemaker Nicholas Clark that between 2001 and 2003 he tasted dozens of wines that had been bottled by various Australian producers in 2 batches – half with cork and half with screw caps. He said that in these tastings he considered that none of the wines under cork were as good as the wines under screw caps. Big call Ralph.
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Q. Do you really tread the grapes with your feet? Isn't that unhygienic?
A. Yes we do – for red wines. And no it’s not. Because of the high natural acidity, the tannins and the alcohol content, wine is a very good antiseptic – in fact there are no human pathogens that can live in wine. But we do wash our feet before we get in the fermenting vat.
Q. Do you have a wholesale distributor?
A. Yes. Contact Sarah Andrew at Selador Wines.
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