Exceptional Vintage

Wine Notes

Intense black cherry and dark berry fruit aromas with complex florals and spice. Concentrated dark cherry flavours, fleshy tannins, with a long rich finish.

Food Pairing

Enjoy with wild mushroom risotto, salmon fillet or slow-roasted duck or pigeon.

Winemaking

Only made in exceptional vintages, this wine was grown exclusively on elevated river terraces, in the cooler Mangatahi sub-region, inland Hawke's Bay. Soils are free draining silt over gravels, the vineyard is planted with clones 114, 115 and 667. Crops were thinned to 1.3kg/vine providing complex, ripe and concentrated fruit flavours.

Fruit for this EV wine is de-stemmed and partially crushed then fermented in open top fermenters, which were hand plunged twice a day to gently extract colour and tannin. A total of 30% was wild fermented with the rest inoculated with RC212 yeast, the wine went through primary fermentation in approximately seven days and stayed on skins for a further three weeks before pressing. Only free run was used in this blend. The wine was racked to French barriques (225L) with light solids, it then completed malolactic fermentation naturally in Spring. It matured for nine months in oak before being blended, and bottled prior to start of vintage 2015. The final blend consists of 20% new oak and 30% second fill.