Moss Wood Winery

Western Australia, South West Australia

Cabernet Sauvignon

$ AUD

Release Price

Drink Window

14.5%

ABV

pH

TA

RS

Nose

This shows a classic snapshot of what the 2008 vintage was all about. Of course, the aroma contains the typical Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon characters of mulberry and red currant but these are given significant lift by pretty notes that can be traced back to the early Autumn. Cabernet’s rose-like and pomegranate scents are not often retained but in this wine they help the nose fill the glass. In the background the wine still retains the typical dark chocolate, earth and leatherlike complexities, as well as spicy, toasty oak.

Palate

Perhaps the observation could be made this displays the warmer, early phase of the season. A classic Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon, with fully ripened fruit flavours of mulberry and raspberry, that are long and generous. These sit over good acidity and wellbalanced, fine-grained tannin, giving a seamless feel. The finish is a combination of oak flavours and tannin that extend the length.

Growing Conditions

started with bud burst dates all close to average but as the season progressed,Spring temperatures gradually warmed, speeding up vine development. This produced a curious anomaly between the early and late varieties. Pinot Noir, for example,flowered on 10th November 2007, which is exactly its average flowering date. On the other hand, Cabernet Sauvignon, which has a budburst about 4 weeks later and would normally flower on or about 26th November, went through on the 15th, so obviously the late Spring weather was warm and very much to the vines’ liking.As Summer progressed, the warm theme continued and meant we anticipated an early harvest. Things went very much as planned when we started picking the Pinot Noir on 4th February, meaning it had taken only 88 days to get from flowering to harvest, about 7 days faster than normal.

Bottling

13/1/2011

Winemaking

All the fruit was hand-picked and delivered to winery where it was destemmed into open,stainless steel fermenters. The must was then seeded with a pure yeast culture and fermentation progressed with temperatures controlled to a maximum of 28 C. Each batch was hand plunged up to four times per day and was tasted daily to monitor tannin structure. In the end, all batches were left on skins until the best balance had been achieved and this varied from 14 to 18 days. After pressing and settling, the wine was racked to barrel where it underwent malolactic fermentation. Once this was completed, each batch was racked, adjusted and returned to cask, where it stayed until December 2010. All the barrels were 225 litres French oak barriques.

After barrel aging the wine was racked and fining trials carried out, in preparation for bottling. As is most often the case, none of the trials improved the wine and so it was left unfined. It was then sterile filtered and bottled on 13th January 2011.