So if you know, you know. And if you don’t, I’ll fill you in. Ochota Barrels wines are some of the loveliest wines to come out of Australia. That may seem like an opinion, but at least according to me, it’s a fact, confirmed at a recent tasting of older and current vintages I had with a few Hudson Valley-based wine industry friends.
Husband and wife team Taras and Amber Ochota knew the technical side of winemaking but for their own label, took a hands-off approach. While they never referred to themselves as “natural winemakers” the wines could play in that field. Bright, fresh, perfumed with structure from acidity and whole bunch vinification rather than extraction and oak. The names of the individual bottlings reference punk bands and songs that I had never listed to (I was raised on 70s disco, 80s one hit wonders, hair metal and the sort of sing along songs you would hear in the bars on the Lake Erie islands.) But the wines still sang for me, even if I didn’t know the lyrics. They would sing to many people – and Stateside, for many of my wine industry friends, these were the wines that turned their heads to what was happening in the Land Down Under.
I was lucky enough to visit Taras and Amber their home and winery (a.k.a. the shed) on what would have been my fourth trip to Australia back in early 2014. I had wrangled myself onto a James Busby tour and the visit to Ochota Barrels in the Adelaide Hills was magic. We all sat under an old walnut tree, tasting wines with Taras, Amber and a few other young gun winemakers, while cherub-like children ran through the vines nearby. It all felt very lost-in-a-forest – which would fittingly become the name of the church-converted-into-a-pizza-oven restaurant they would open with friends a few years later.
Taras passed away in November of 2020 after an extended battle with an auto-immune disease which still, after that year in isolation, felt very sudden. Many words were written by those that knew him much better than I did. They are worth reading to feel the impact one person can have on an industry and its small slice of the world.
Around that time, a stash of Ochota Barrels wines arrived at the retail shop I own. These would be his last vintages and I never could quite bring myself to put them on the shelf. It wasn’t really a sense of finality that prevented me from selling them; the wines and the winery still live on through Amber’s good work. And from the tasting notes below, they are as lovely and gorgeous as ever.
I don’t think this is unique to me, but when I have a lineup of wines that represent a theme, a person, a region, a sense of some sort of history, I want to open them all at once, taste them side by side. And I want to do that in community with fellow wine lovers and would-be wine lovers. And if you’re looking at a calendar, 2020 was not the year to be doing that. Nor was 2021. Then 2022 and 2023 passed in a blur. And there I was… with a stash of these beautiful wines still hiding out at the shop, waiting to be shared.
Christina Pickard, a wine writer whose beat runs deep in Australia, also had her own stash. For years (yes, gulp, years), we have been talking about opening them together. And finally in early January, we did it in the company of a few other Hudson Valley wine industry folk. And oh, it was joyous! Wines were tasted. Stories were told. Food was eaten. Party games were played. Many notes were taken – we are professionals, after all!
The winery is based in the Adelaide Hills, with fruit sourced from plots across South Australia, ranging from cool climate plots in the hills to warmer sites in the Barossa and McLaren Vale. The grapes are picked on the earlier side, especially for those warmer climate sites, but the wines are never out of balance. You can always taste the sunshine, even though the structure comes from acidity and grace rather than alcohol and power.
They’re also wines that open up beautifully once the bottle is popped. Somehow the fruit becomes deeper over a day or two, adding density and texture to wines that are already beautifully textured. This makes them a joy to spend time with and get to know. It also makes it easier to spend the money on a bottle or two. I took a few of the bottles home with me, so for those wines, you’ll see my second day notes – actual and imagined.
Ochota Barrels, From the North Mourvedre 2020 (Barossa Valley):
I do love a nice Mourvèdre picked early. There’s always this sort of pomegranate thing that underlies the darker brambly fruit, like little shots of bright red rubies. Dirty and Rowdy and La Clarine Farm are two that spring to mind. And now this one. It’s the first time I’ve had it. It’s both varietally correct and totally its own magic thing. Over the night, it opened up, gaining fruit flesh, a firm silky tannic character, and deeply brooding complexity. I fell in love. Alas, there was none to be had for my second day tasting notes, so it was a delightful one night stand.
Ochota Barrels, Green Room Grenache 2019 (McLaren Vale)
My first note: Ooooooooo yes! I know that's not a technical term, but it hits the emotional vibe of this wine. Looking at the tech sheets, I think this was the first year the wine was made as strictly Grenache. Before that, if memory recalls, it was Syrah and Grenache. The Green Room was probably the first bottling of Ochota Barrels I ever had, so aside from being delicious, there’s also a bit of nostalgia involved for my early days of Aussie wine love. Moving on to more specific notes: Perfumed. I would say “ethereal” but that’s sort of a put-it-on-a-pedestal word – and this wine isn’t meant for a pedestal – it’s meant for enjoyment. There’s a sandy floral note to it – like roses and strawberry bushes blossoming near an ocean that’s popped up in the middle of the desert. What does that really mean? Not sure – as the kids say, it’s a vibe, so run with it. Later in the night, I added notes that the wine had gotten juicer but there was also more tension and grip and that there was a subtle salinity to the wine – a salted red raspberry note. So good.
Ochota Barrels, Home Vineyard Pinot Noir 2018 (Adelaide Hills)
You want tech sheet info? I've got none of that! What I know based down from past emails and fragments of my imagination: this is Amber Ochota's Pinot Noir made from the home vineyard plot. I'm guessing there's a good bit of whole cluster + old wood. But one doesn't need a tech sheet to love this wine. Very pretty aromatics. Roses. Tart strawberries. Alpine herbal notes (it is truly hilly in those Adelaide Hills!). The second day, it had relaxed into itself, like a sigh. Pink peppercorn. And so much lovely red fruit that reminds me of the crunchy, crystallized spun sugar casing of a candy apple. There’s a bit of that pleasant rustiness I associate with good Poulsard. Lovely.
Ochota Barrels, Mark of Cain Pinot Meunier 2020 (Adelaide Hills)
A reminder that Pinot Meunier is one of the happiest-yet-geekiest black grapes out there. In sparkling form, from Champagne, England, or elsewhere, the best examples mingle subtle red fruits with a salinity that is pretty much irresistible. In this red, still version, it shows some of that same character – happy red fruit + a saline/earthy character. My exact notes: The wine recalls the grape in sparkling versions but red. And still. And with a whole lot of sunshine. This may seem rather cryptic, but that’s high praise indeed. I don’t have second-day notes on this one – another soul was given that bottle for take-away, but my guess is that it opened up into deep pink fruit – like rhubarb studded with a pink peppercorn savory character, the tension and energy remaining, but with the fruit broadening and cuddling it in a satiny little jacket. Michelle Pfeiffer singing Cool Rider in “Grease 2”? Yup – that would be it.
Ochota Barrels, Texture Like the Sun - Sector Red 7, 2020 (South Australia)
Lovely fruit with a bit more aromatic pink peppercorn spice than the 2019. The Pinot Noir, Syrah, and Pinot Meunier grapes where fermented as whole clusters, which gives that spice and a bit of spine. Gewurztraminer pressings add a bit more structure. I'm talking a lot about structure, but that's mainly because I tasted it side by side with the 2019 which a bit more floral and lifted, but that's really getting into the differences of small things – because this wine is juicy and sunny and bright and gulpable and just the thing to make the winter go a little faster. Notes from the second day: A tangerine dream enters into the equation – this lovely bit of orange citrus juice pops up. Sun-warmed strawberry with just a wee touch of fresh earth.
Ochota Barrels, The Price of Silence Gamay 2019 (Adelaide Hills)
I don’t have much info on this specific vintage, but I’m fairly certain the grapes are from a vineyard planted in 1985 as Gamay, grafted over to Chardonnay and then re-grafted to Gamay. It was a roughly couple years for the vines – the fires of 2020 hit them hard, but by 2022, word is that the vines regained their balance which based on my notes from that vintage, they are back to singing their happy Gamay song. As for the 2019? Red fruit, lip-smacking goodness. There’s a touch of green peppercorn which I have started to associate with earlier-picked Gamay, a trick a lot of Beaujolais producers seem to be relying on to beat the warming temperatures in the region. A lot of those wines just seem underripe, but in the Ochota, on the other side of the planet, it plays nicely with the aromatic spice elements adding a lovely savory note to the bright red fruits. I would love to taste this on Day 2 – but there was none left to try! Based on the 2022 on the second day, I’m sure it would have been worth the wait. That one gained density and sleekness overnight – the fruit somehow concentrated, like sunlight through a magnifying glass. I would bet money the 2019 would have done the same.
Ochota Barrels, Where's the Pope Syrah 2020 (McLaren Vale)
This is the first vintage of the wine – the usual Adelaide Hills Syrah was smoke tainted, so Taras and Amber took the bit from McLaren Vale that would normally go into the Green Room and made this wine as a stand along bottling while the Green Room would become 100% Grenache. And that’s how it’s been since. The soil for this one is schist and that comes through in a subtle mineral edge. It falls firmly into that “savory Syrah” bucket, with plenty of black pepper spice, black olives, and black roses. Deep purple vibes, if we want to talk about vibes. It’s vibrant with structure from acidity and whole bunches, but the sunshine shines through. It’s warm and inviting – it just happens to have a thing for black leather. Notes from the second day: As with all Ochota Barrels wines, it’s opened up beautifully. It’s like a salad of crushed dried violets, black olives, sprinkled with black pepper and drizzled with the most divine black raspberry jus. (I couldn’t really tell you what a jus is to save my soul, but the sommeliers in my tasting group are always talking about it in their pairing recommendations and it always sounds divine!)
