2025 Giant Steps Yarra Valley Pinot Noir

96 pts
A fast and furious vintage in the Yarra for the Giant Steps team giving the a beautifully balanced and supple Pinot Noir in 2025.

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Sale price$35.00
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Description

Mel Chester and the crew at Giant Steps treat their broader Yarra Valley releases with the same obsession and attention to detail as their single vineyard bottlings, proving you don't have to drop triple digits to drink exceptional wine.

Half of the fruit for the 2025 release is pulled from the cooler stretches of the Upper Yarra. Following a heavy winter soaking, a warm and dry spring set the stage for an unusually fast, compressed harvest in February and March, yielding bunches with serious weight and concentration.

Everything is hand-sorted in the vines before hitting the winery. The team ran with a third whole bunch this vintage, using a mix of warm semi-carbonic ferments and destemmed cold-soaked berries kicking off naturally. It spent eight months resting on lees in French oak barriques before being gravity-bottled with zero fining or filtration.

This is one of the all-time go-to staffies wines here at DD. The fruit is bright, tannins are fine-grained, it's pitch-perfect Yarra Pinot 101. It remains one of the smartest value buys in the country.

96 points
"Balanced acidity and tannins complete a superb and well-priced Yarra pinot to drink now and over the next three to four years. As good a Giant Steps entry point as I have tasted."
- Philip Rich (Halliday Wine Companion)

93 points
"As delicious as it is delightful. There’s a spirit of generosity to the Pinot Noir – it has Drink Me written all over it... It’s satiny, fluid and fresh; it’s charming."
- Campbell Mattinson (The Wine Front)

96 points - "An opulent crimson purple. Explodes from the glass with its aromas of ripe cherries, raspberry coulis, lavender and spice. It's just so brightly fruited and juicy on the palate, too. Balanced acidity and tannins complete a superb and well-priced Yarra pinot to drink now and over the next three to four years. As good a Giant Steps entry point as I have tasted." - Philip Rich (Halliday Wine Companion)

93 points - "As delicious as it is delightful. There’s a spirit of generosity to the Pinot Noir – it has Drink Me written all over it – but it still manages to be neat and well structured. Red cherry, strawberry, flashes of raspberry, mint, meat, roasted nuts and gentle orange oil notes. It’s satiny, fluid and fresh; it’s charming." - Campbell Mattinson (The Wine Front)

Customer Reviews

Region
Yarra Valley, Victoria
Vintage
2025
Type
Red Wine
Variety
Pinot Noir
Vegan Friendly
✔
Volume
750ml
Alcohol Volume
13.5%
pH
3.56

Acidity
5.3g/L

Closure
ScrewCap
Bottling Date
November 2025

Harvest Date
February - March 2025

Background
Yarra Valley

Vintage Notes
The 2025 season kicked off with a generous, wet winter that filled the soil profile with moisture. From there, spring arrived warm and dry. Shoots pushed early; we had fantastic spring conditions during flowering and fruit set. The dry season pushed growth and ripening along even though temperatures weren’t hot, in fact barely warmer than average, a pleasant surprise for the dryness of the season. Harvest came earlier than usual and moved quickly, a compressed vintage that asked a great deal of the team and rewarded the effort with fruit of exceptional quality, concentration and weight.

Vineyard Notes
Sourced from vineyards across the Yarra Valley. 50% sourced from the upper Yarra ranges.

Winemaking
At Giant Steps, we hand pick 100% of our fruit and fastidiously hand sort in the vineyard. Pinot Noir has one of two processing pathways at Giant Steps - either fermented semi carbonic with 100% whole bunch or destemmed and fermented with whole berries. When the fruit arrives at the winery, we determine which direction to take the parcel depending on clone, vineyard, stem ripeness and flavour. Our whole bunch batches are fermented warm with minimal mixing for 14 days. The destemmed whole berry parcels are cold soaked for 3 days before we allow them to warm up and start fermentation naturally. All of our cap management is done using gravity drain and returns, allowing for gentle extraction before pressing. Each parcel is then transferred by gravity to French oak barriques for malolactic fermentation and is kept on those lees for the duration of its maturation. The parcels are blended together in Spring before bottling in December. In 2025, this wine has 32% whole bunches. Parcels are matured in French oak (16% new, 84% seasoned) for eight months. This wine is bottled by gravity without fining or filtration.

Price Bracket $31 to $40
Type Red
Body Light Bodied
Variety Pinot Noir
Country Australia
Region Yarra Valley
Australian State VIC
Feature Women in Wine
High Score
Reviewed By Halliday Wine Companion
The Wine Front
Critic Score 96
Size 750ml
Vintage 2025
Closure Screw Cap

Giant Steps

Giant Steps is a premium Yarra Valley outfit founded by Phil Sexton and located in the township of Healesville. Beginning with the vision of original head winemaker Steve Flamsteed, Giant Steps developed an international reputation for producing some of Australia's finest examples of single vineyard Pinot Noir & Chardonnay.

In 2021 the exceptionally talented Melanie Chester joined the team as the new head of winemaking and viticulture, marking an exciting new chapter in this elite producer's story.

Every aspect of the Giant Steps process is geared towards making truly world-class wines from the vineyard to the final bottled wine. The focus is on what the Yarra does best - Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Shiraz/Syrah and Bordeaux-variety blends - and showcasing the unique terroirs of some of the region's finest vineyards.

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