Josh Cooper Doug’s Vineyard Pinot Noir 2025

The 2025 growing season delivered another outstanding vintage in our region. A warm, settled spring and summer were balanced by cool evenings and an extended ripening period, allowing the fruit to reach full physiological maturity without excessive sugar accumulation. Consistently dry conditions throughout the season meant disease pressure was virtually non-existent, resulting in pristine fruit arriving at the winery.

Doug’s Vineyard is situated on the outskirts of the township of Romsey in the Macedon Ranges. Owned by the Newnham family, it was planted 20 years ago to predominantly MV6 and smaller amounts of 114 and 115 clone pinot noir.

A cool hamlet, the vines sit at around 500m altitude, atop a North and North East facing hillside on red rocky volcanic basalt soil, moderating vigour and providing amazing intensity to the fruit, ripening small, beautifully formed clusters at low sugar levels.

Once hand harvested in the cool of morning, with careful sorting in the vineyard, grapes were transferred to open fermenter with 20% as whole bunches and the remainder de-stemmed. The must was then allowed to soak 4-5 days at its cool ambient temperature until fermentation commenced. Thereafter the grapes were gently extracted by a combination of pumping over and pigeage by foot. The wine was then pressed after a total of three weeks on skins and transferred to two new (Laurent “Magic Cask” thick stave, blonde toast) seven young (2-4yo Laurent “Magic Cask”) and ten old (6-10yo) oak Burgundian piece for lees ageing for 12 months, followed by four months in stainless steel on fine lees before racking and bottling, unfined and unfiltered.

One of our best vintages from this lovely site, showing the exceptional combination of freshness, depth and structure in an elegant frame. Cellaring will be well rewarded.