ABOUT OUR WINES
The year of
our first vintage, 2001, was warm and dry with just enough rainfall for our
non-irrigated vines.
Kevin made
about 5000L from the initial planting of 5 acres in Lodestone and Garamond. It was bottled under gravity in December 2002
and is some 450 cases. We bottle the
wine on the property with our own equipment so that we can control the process
and avoid mechanical handling of the finished wine.
Kevin’s
tasting note for this wine is as follows:
“The colour
is deep and dark garnet with a bluish tinge.
On the nose there are intense aromas of dark fruits and brown spice with
savoury notes. In the palate the fruit
flavours are concentrated and complex, with ripe dark plums, liqueur cherries
and meatiness. French oak characters
provide good balance. The wine, though
full bodied, has a lovely soft texture and fills the palate with velvety fruit
tannins. At the finish ripe fruit
flavours and soft tannins show great persistence.”
This first vintage, released in 2003, was “a dream start” according to
Halliday: The details have already been
set out on page 1.
Climatic conditions in
2002 began and ended well but were catastrophically adverse during the critical
time of flowering and fruit set. In
November-December 2001 the rainfall was double the usual and the winds were
constant and cruel. In the result fruit
set was 90% below what it should have been.
The fruit that set ripened well, but the final yield was only 1.4 tonnes
from the whole vineyard, perhaps 200kg per acre!
The fruit was hand
picked by the friends of
Kevin’s
tasting note for this wine is as follows:
“Lovely
garnet in colour, but not too dense.
The nose gives up complex fruit aromas of cherry plums and currents as
well as the smoky smells of the charcuterie,
such as spicy sausage and sweet bacon fat.
The flavours in the palate are rich and concentrated. There are numerous red forest fruits and a
few dried herbs from the bottom of the jar.
The front and mid palate texture is silky smooth, the tannins very
soft. The wine has excellent structure
and line, finishing clean and long.”
The purchase limit for the
2002 is 6 per customer. The single
bottle price is $35.00 per bottle. The
half-case price is $198.00 ($33.00 per bottle). Further
details are in the order on the last page. There are limited stocks available.
The difficult conditions
of 2002 were not repeated in the vintages of 2003, 2004 and 2005. The 2003 Pinot Noir has been bottled and will
be released in the middle of 2005. It
has evolved into a rich and complex wine, as some visitors have seen in barrel
samples. There will be about 400 cases
of this wine, including a single bottling of 70 cases of Homage.
The 2004 Pinot Noir just
finished malolactic fermentation with indigenous bacteria. It shows excellent early promise but there is
a long way to go. We expect there to be
at least 400 cases of this wine. The
2005 vintage has just been completed. We
will supply full details about these wines in subsequent newsletters.