Wildflower Brewing & Blending - St Florence 2019: Black Muscat

The variant made with Black Muscat was made by blending five barrels of mature, barrel aged Gold with hand harvested Black Muscat grapes from Thornbrook Orchard in Nashdale NSW where we source many fruits. We picked the grapes with our friends Matt and Suzanne from The Masonry in Seattle on 21 March 2019, drove them back into Sydney and immediately transferred them into a stainless steel variable capacity tank without crushing or destemming and allowed for their fermentation to naturally begin with the native yeasts on the skins of the fruit. After three weeks, we removed the juice at the bottom of the ferment and blended in three (1856, 1857 and 1858) mature barrels of Gold, coincidentally all barrels that had once held Muscat wine from Clonakilla and allowed the fruit to macerate and referment with the beer for 2.5 months. In mid June, we blended in 1740 (7 month old Gold) and 1839 (11 month old Gold) for necessary structure and balance. It was packaged on 10 July and allowed to go through a tertiary fermentation for carbonation and conditioning for 8 weeks before release. Upon release, this beer opens with a gently attractive perfumey, rose water aroma to be expected from the muscat grapes, however unlike its white skinned sibling, the aroma moves toward layers of spice and earthiness. The palate is delicate resembles this continuance from sweet fruit and turkish delight flavours towards a structural spice, phenolc and tannin finish.