2016 Jilly Field Blend

As I write, I have just opened Jared Dixon's green-waxed and corked bottle of 2016 Jilly Field Blend the label of which features a greyscale, alert hare, the type you see, like wallabies for example, sitting up, ears vertical, scanning and ready to bound off in the opposite direction from what they are perceiving. The list of grape varieties in this Field Blend is like the chants of the Catholic liturgy for Easter: the reds being Nebbiolo, Shiraz, Tempranillo, Tannat, Pinotage, Tinta Cao, Touriga, Barbera, and the whites being Gewurtzraminer, Chardonnay, Viognier and Petit Manseng. Dixon took the grapes of the first rows of Mark Kirkby's Topper's Mountain 'fruit-salad' vine plantings, which are usually under attack from birds in the nearby bush. Dixon's hand-made wines are made from what it to hand. He whole-bunch pressed and fermented with the abundant wild yeast of New England and the Northern Rivers. The Field Blend's subtle, mixed perfume is of calamine lotion, vanilla and orange peel. In colour, it's really a deepish ruby-crimson, and that's because, despite those whites, many of the reds are big red-wine grapes. Its palate is, not unexpectedly, surprising: at the very end is the citrus of the whites; before that is, briefly, Turkish delight; in the middle, some musk sticks; toward the end, some orange peel again; and at the beginning is citrus, where the whites are very strong. So it is wine that glides across borders.