Our Wines

Deep and darkly brooding in colour this wine has a complex nose showing brambly red fruit with riper, rich black cherries, smoky oak and some floral violet notes. Typical of our vineyard there are supporting notes of thyme and spicy pepper found within focused acidity and layers of fruit and earthy complexity on the palate. Lush and silky tannins characterise the elegant palate with a rich and concentrated core of ripe red fruits and cherries that linger for a long powerful finish.

The winemaking here consists of a gentle destem with partial crushing into small fermenters with clones kept as separate as possible; resulting in 12 ferments ranging in size from 1 to 8 tonnes. These ferments are given up to seven days cold soaking before being allowed to warm and begin to ferment. Fast warm ferments are hand plunged up to 4 times a day and temperatures of over 30C are common with a few select batches undergoing some extended maceration, before pressing to barrel with minimal settling. MLF occurs naturally as spring warms up and all batches were finished well before the grading tasting was carried out in February 2011.

The grapes for this wine were all handpicked from our Awatere Valley vineyard. Perched on a series of river terraces and above 200 metres in altitude we are always battling the elements be it frost or high wind. The upside of this is found in low crops and very concentrated fruit, helped along by hard work in the vineyard with shoot and fruit thinning on our 10 year old quality clones of 115, 5, 667, 777 and Abel. Picked from the 19th to 26th of April in near perfect conditions, the brix ranged from the Moana block Abel at 24.8 to the Araroa block Clone 5 at 26.3.