The labels sent by Owen Latta. Huon Hooke
The above picture shows how one very serious and committed winemaker sends his samples to the wine media.
These are some of the slips of paper individually sticky-taped to the bottles of Owen Latta’s wines. It’s not necessary of course, to provide so much information, and the wines are blind tasted anyway, but I read the comments after I’ve tasted and reviewed the wines.
Hands-off, lo-fi winemaking—almost ‘natural’ winemaking—and eclectic fruit sourcing are the hallmarks of Latta Vino bottlings.
The notes describe the way the grapes were grown and where, how the wines were made, and often some history of the people and places. This is all important stuff to Owen Latta, who runs his family’s Eastern Peake winery and vineyard at Coghills Creek, near Ballarat, and it certainly provides an interesting read for the scribe and critic.
Latta took the reins at Eastern Peake in the early noughties but his parents planted the first vines 41 years ago. Eastern Peake produces pinot noirs (several of them), chardonnays, rosé and sparkling wine, but because he loves to experiment, Owen Latta also produces a second range of wines branded Latta Vino. These are packaged entirely differently, and have their own website, so there can be no confusion. They range from the bizarre to the almost conventional, but they’re nearly always delicious. Hands-off, lo-fi winemaking—almost ‘natural’ winemaking—and eclectic fruit sourcing (Pyrenees, Henty and Macedon Ranges figure) are the hallmarks of Latta Vino bottlings. “Unfined,
This Article was originally published on The Real Review
