Fraser Gallop Estate

Western Australia, South West Australia

Semillon Sauvignon Blanc

Margaret River

$24 AUD

Release Price

Drink Window

ABV

3.16

pH

7.2

TA

RS

Nose

The nose shows passionfruit , limes, red grapefruit, cumquat, guavas. It has a crisp and refreshing palate that tastes of grapefruit, passionfruit and gooseberry.

Palate

This wine has the hallmarks of flavour, length, elegance and texture with a long sizzling citrus finish. A wine that will drink well in it’s youth.

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.In 2007 we planted 6.4 acres of Semillon on our Estate in Wilyabrup and have a well-known grower in the cooler sub-region of Karridale and Wallcliffe that will continue to supply us with bright refreshing Sauvignon Blanc for years to come. All our vineyards are VSP trellised at 3.60 m by 1.8 m to allow for ease of management and good sunlight penetration. The soils are generally gravely loams over clay base 1.2 m deep. The vineyards for Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc are prudently irrigated in order to keep the vines in a healthy state with good canopies to avoid moisture stress and sunburn, which will destroy the lovely aromatics of these varieties. Irrigation was used sparingly in the month preceding harvest in order to concentrate flavours more. We are looking to maintain vibrancy in the fruit with out excessive alcohol levels which means avoiding excessive exposure and sunburn.

Bottling

11/06/2018.

Winemaking

The Sauvignon Blanc grapes were machine harvested at Karridale in the cool hours of the morning and delivered promptly to the crush pad. The Semillon was machine picked from the estate vineyard and delivered to the crush pad in the early hours of the morning. The Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc grapes were destemmed and crushed and gently pumped through a must chiller on it’s way to the press to get the grapes down to 8ºC in our Bucher XPF 80 press. With the automatic Ortal computerised pressing programme the quality of pressing was superb with minimal rotations of the press. The juice was then fermented in stainless steel tanks to maintain the fresh bright fruit flavours and aromatics using two different yeasts. A small proportion of Semillon and were fermented in French Oak barrels to provide texture and interest to the blend. Sulphites were added to the wine on completion of fermentation to deter Malolactic Fermentation from occurring and to preserve the fruit flavours of the wine. The wine was protein and cold stabilised prior to blending, cross flow filtering and bottling.