Nose
Cassis, violets, graphite and mulberries, subtle tones of dried herbs and maraschino cherries.
Palate
Bristling red fruit and graphite favours on the entry. The palate starts and finishes with unbridled fine bone tannin throughout, laced with flavours of cherry glaze, violets and slate. Finishes with liquorice and bruised violet petals.
Growing Conditions
The 2015 to 2016 vintage season in Margaret River was generally warm and dry up to the third week in January 2016. The relatively dry winter combined with a warmer growing season corresponded to vines achieving good shoot lengths and making the transition from vegetative growth to fruiting growth a little earlier than normal; a great feature for fruit quality. Our dry growing season was quenched on 19th March, 2016 with 50 mm of rain, enough to wash the dust of the vine leaves, top up the dry soil profiles and carry the vines through to full ripeness. The resulting wines are fragrant with succulent natural acidities, lovely textures and intense aromatic lift.
Winemaking
The fruit is hand-picked early in the morning, whilst the berries are still cool. It is de-stemmed and lightly crushed, so that each berry is barely split. Fermentation ensures, allowing slow, more controlled extraction of tannin and flavour. The wine is pumped over three times a day, then judiciously backed off as the wine develops. It then soaks on its skins for 14 days, before gentle pressing and barrelling down. The Cabernet Sauvignon is aged French oak barriques for 15 months. The Cabernet Franc requires a more gentle ageing platform and environment, and so, is aged in larger French oak puncheons for 15 months.
Aging
If you like bright, fresh, primary fruit, enjoy this wine over the next 8 years. If you prefer the tannins to soften and complex savoury notes to develop, careful cellaring of up to 20 years will be rewarded.
Appearance
Cherry red with black hints.
