“I am a patient boy, I wait, I wait, I wait. My time’s like water down a drain, everybody’s moving, everybody’s moving… But I don’t sit idly by…” The lyrics of ‘Waiting Room‘ by Washington DC punk band Fugazi ring around our head as we taste this wine, lyrics evocative and an attitude emblematic of the life of the late Taras Ochota, one of Australia’s modern winemaking titans who had a penchant for punk rock, surfing, and making wine that felt vibrant, electric, and at times, stochastic in the best possible way.
A Harvest Ritual Between Friends
We lost Taras in 2020 but his legacy lives on through the efforts of his wife Amber and close friends Gareth and Rainbo Belton of Gentle Folk. What began as the couples’ annual harvest ritual, a long lunch coinciding with the pressing of a cuvée of Pinot Noir that would go by the name Father’s Milk, is carried on by Taras’ family and the Gentle Folk clan with the 2022 vintage assembled with an even 50/50 split of Pinot Noir and Gamay from higher elevation sites in the Basket Range.
How Father’s Milk Is Made
The grapes are harvested on the same day, left entirely as whole bunches, and tipped into an open top fermenter before getting gently foot stomped by the kiddos; a bit of carbonic maceration in simultaneous native fermentation with the bubbling, inky juice the berries get steeped in over the course of two weeks. Basket pressed to ensure elegance in the final wine before it ages in two barrels for just over a year, a living and evolving memory of fatherhood and friendship bound through a wine that sees less than a thousand bottles of production a year.
Needless to say, an incredibly special and emotional wine for those that make it, and those fortunate enough to open a bottle with the ones they love, perhaps over a long lunch, just as Taras and Gareth would have wanted.
Father’s Milk 2022 Tasting Notes
The 2022 is in a beautiful place right now, we gathered recently to taste it in good company, discussing, swirling, and savoring a wine that means so much to so many. A nose of satsuma plum, crushed graphite, sour cherry, pipe smoke, and struck iron meld into an ensorcelling palate of blood orange, aforementioned plums, black cardamom, persimmon, angostura bark, and a delightfully engaging amaro-esque complexity and weight that affirms the wine’s time in the sunshine. Juicy but serious, a wine to accompany the table, and more importantly those sat around it.
Wine Details
- Wine: Gentle Folk & Ochota Barrels Father’s Milk 2022
- Region: Basket Range, Adelaide Hills, Australia
- Blend: 50% Pinot Noir, 50% Gamay
- ABV: 13.5%
- Production: Fewer than 1,000 bottles a year
Interested in ordering a bottle? Or discovering more wines from Gentle Folk, Ochota Barrels, and the Adelaide Hills? Send us an email at order@winegarage.asia.