Merle expresses the slatey soils of the distinguished Pike vineyard. The Polish Hill subregion is considerably cooler than the rest of Clare Valley, imparting distinctive flavours and aromas into the ultimate wine. Vines are kept fresh with minimum levels of irrigation, just sufficient to keep the leaves intact and functioning, but not actually growing. This encourages all the vine's energy into ripening the fruit, optimizing flavour and aroma development in the process. Treated to the most exacting fruit selection and the highest standard of vinification, only the exclusively free run juices are included, Merle is inoculated to a mix of choice yeasts and coolly fermented without any malolactic.