Nose
The 2018 Rose sings strawberry shortcake, watermelon, rose water and musk on the nose.
Palate
A pretty and delicate perfume in the glass. There is an impression that this will taste sweet having nosed the wine, but know this is surprisingly refreshing and not sweet at all! Mouth-watering flavours of citrus drizzled strawberries, a touch of cranberry and watermelon. The wine has texture and is surprisingly dry with faint tannins and a touch of vanilla cream.
Growing Conditions
A good amount of rainfall over winter (May – September) set up the soil moistures and filled the dams full for the upcoming 2018 vintage. The temperatures during Spring were right bang in the middle of our decade averages and the benign weather over Spring was ideal for flowering, so crop set was high for the second year in a row. Also the Red Gum blossom was also the best we’ve ever seen so the Silvereye bird damage was the least we’ve seen! We still applied bird nets to play it safe though. There were 3 main rain events during the growing season but none too worrying ( 14th Feb- 15 mm, 15th March – 11mm, 15th April – 5mm). The February temperatures were among the coolest, but then in the first 2 weeks of March we had 5 days above 30 º C. Overall during the ripening period for grapes the average over Jan-April was lower temperature than average with no noticeable heat spikes making for grapes with lovely fragrance, higher acidities and higher sugar levels than normal. The 2018 overall heat loads from Nov-March was 126.3 (25.3 ºC Ave.) , this compares with a hot vintage in 2011 of 135.2 ( 27.0ºC Ave.) , and a cool vintage in 2006 of 117.9 ( 23.6ºC Ave). Very similar to 2007, but not as early.
Bottling
10/07/2018.
Winemaking
The hand picked grapes were de-stemmed and chilled to the air bag press and then left to cold soak on their skins for a few hours before pressing to stainless steel tanks. The relatively clear juice was fermented in temperature-controlled tanks using a variety of yeasts. Two thirds of the juice was also drained to neutral old white barrels for fermentation. The wines were then blended and cross flow filtered prior to bottling.
Appearance
An ultra pale salmon pink colour.
Food Pairing
A versatile wine pairing well with salmon tartare, chicken terrine, goats cheese or raw crudités and olive tapenade.
