Moss Wood Winery

Western Australia, South West Australia

Amy’'s

Margaret River

$ AUD

Release Price

Drink Window

14%

ABV

pH

TA

RS

Nose

On the nose, the Glenmore contributes its usual fruit aromas of blueberry and plum and Montgomery Brothers is all raspberries and violets. They combine to produce classic Cabernet Sauvignon aromas with a soft oak background.

Palate

The themeof bright fruit characters continues on the palate, where the wine has vibrant blueberry and mulberry flavours, full body, good length and a firm tannin finish.

Growing Conditions

This is the first of our 2005 Cabernet-based wines to be released and it carries the quality hallmark of the vintage. It was an excellent growing season for the variety although marred ever so slightly by some late rain. Fortunately, neither the Glenmore nor Montgomery Brothers vineyard was affected, and both produced fruit of excellent quality. Although they are relatively young, it would not be going too far to suggest that this is the best vintage either has produced.

Bottling

28/7/2006

Winemaking

When a vintage is this good, the responsibility of the winery is to get the wine safely through the production process without compromising the quality and the winemaking crew delivered. The production technique was varied slightly in that the fruit was destemmed into both open and closed fermenters. Each batch was seeded with pure yeast culture and fermentation proceeded, with plunging or gentle pumpover 3 times per day. Temperatures were set at a maximum of 30C. Pressing took place after 3 or 4 days, depending on the batch but it is important to note this wine spends less time on skins than either the Ribbon Vale or Moss Wood wines. The reason is that we seek to preserve the freshest fruit characters and are not looking for bigger and complex tannins. After pressing, the wine is racked to barrel, where it spent 14 months. Again there is a difference in style compared with its two siblings. We use only 25% new oak and less time in barrel to further retain fresh fruit notes. From barrel, the wine was racked to stainless steel and fining trials were carried out, although in the end no fining was needed. The wine was then sterile filtered and bottled.