Nose
Tropical fruits up front, especially passionfruit, guava and black currant buds with an underlying grassy note.
Palate
Orange blossom and gooseberries combine with the tropical notes from the nose. The flavours keep evolving as it opens in the glass. The palate is complex with both texture and a crisp acidity resulting in a wine with beautiful balance and wonderful length on the finish. This wine has that drinkability factor.
Growing Conditions
From the summer rainfall & river flooding in the Swan Valley, to the threat of not ripening any of the red grapes in Margaret River, the 2017 vintage will be remembered as one of the most nerve-racking and anxious seasons. It certainly beats all of the last 10 vintages I've seen at Sandalford. Overall, the whole growing season, from Spring through to Summer / Autumn was much cooler than average. There were no heat extremes this year. This delayed the ripening of all varieties by at least 3 -4 weeks than normal. For the whites, the wines have excellent flavour concentration and structure and were harvested with a good natural acid and sugar balance.
Harvest
The grapes for this wine were machine-harvested in the cool of night during March 2017.
Winemaking
After crushing, the must was transferred to one of our tank presses where only the free-run juice was utilised for fermentation. Low solids and cool ferment temperatures using specialised yeast strains ensured the fruit characters were preserved to their utmost in the resultant wine. Blending according to style was conducted just prior to stabilisation and bottling.
Appearance
Pale lemon.
