Nose
Blossoms, pepper, meat spice and cinnamon.
Palate
Rich and voluptuous entry of black and red fruit, balanced with flavours of white pepper, plums and cloves. A bright yet powerful finish of cocoa nib and rose water.
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
Roughly half the block was hand-picked and de-stemmed, with the berries left uncrushed to preserve the natural fruit perfumes and allow for slow, controlled tannin and flavour extraction. A third of the stalks yielded from the destemming processes were added back to the must to promote extraction of spicier flavours and more savoury fruit characters and textures. 4 days later the other half of the block was hand-picked and de-stemmed, with the berries left un-crushed to preserve the natural fruit perfumes and allow for slow, controlled tannin and flavour extraction. The ferments were kept cold and pumped over twice a day for 8 days. The still-fermenting wines were then gently separated from their skins and allowed to finish ferment in a mix of old and new Burgundian-style oak barrels. The wines were then aged separately in oak for 14 months before bottling.
Aging
This is a fresh drink now style, but can be aged for up to 8 years for added complexity.
Appearance
Purple with red hints.
