Nose
Pronounced blue fruit aromas with just a little of the blackcurrant.
Palate
The palate is firmly structured with a tight core. Juicy and concentrated, with a salivating undercurrent of briny acidity.
Growing Conditions
Our Estate grown Eightfold Cabernet grapes were sourced predominantly from our Wills Domain and Yallingup Estate vineyards. 95% Cabernet WD Block 4, and 5% Cabernet Yallingup Block 3.
This Cabernet is very much the product of an unseasonably cool ripening period. Consequently, the wine is much finer than you would typically see under the Eight Fold label, and more broadly from Margaret River.
Winemaking
Picked in the cool of the morning, gently destemmed and inoculated with a cultured yeast strain and fermented at 24oC-28oC.
Thus, in making this wine we have focused on gentle colour and extraction techniques whilst on skins during fermentation and avoided extended post ferment maceration. Similarly, it is not a year where the wines would benefit from lots of new oak or extended time in barrel.
Aging
At dryness the wine was pressed off skins and matured in French oak. Matured for 10 months in 25% new oak.