From the winemaker…
A vibrant medley of Granny Smith apple, white-fleshed nectarine, mandarin and citrus blossom – entwined with a wild-yeast derived gunflint and lanolin-like savouriness. An invigorating off-dry style that walks on the wild side and delivers a ying-yang balance of bright, natural acidity and a subliminal touch of sweetness – a mouthwatering palate that finishes with a delicious lemon/lime tang.
Organically farmed grapes were grown at Ashmore Vineyard in Fairhall, adjacent to the mouth of the Brancott Valley on gravelly clay-loam soils, conditions more typical of the Southern Valleys than the Wairau plains. This 23-year-old organically certified vineyard is trained on a two-cane VSP (vertical shoot positioning) trellis and is rigorously shootand fruit-thinned to regulate yield.
The fruit was hand-picked at moderate ripeness levels to capture the exuberance and natural acidity of the variety. The grapes were whole-bunch pressed using a very low maceration press cycle and the resulting juice was cold-settled, then racked to fermentation vessels. Half of the juice was inoculated in a stainless steel tank using cultured yeast and the balance was filled into old French oak barriques, where it was allowed to undergo spontaneous indigenous yeast fermentation. Towards the end of fermentation, all the wine was transferred to a stainless steel tank where the fermentation was stopped, retaining 19 g/l residual sugar. The blended wine was filled into old barrels, where it remained on yeast lees for a further five months, prior to bottling in December 2019 with alcohol 11.8%, pH 3.05 and acidity of 8.0 g/l.
Release: October 2020
