2015 Whitehaven Marlborough Pinot Noir
Sold Out
TASTING NOTE
Colour / Appearance: Mid-ruby, with a purple hue.
Aroma / Bouquet: Ripe plum and raspberry, with hints of cherry, violet and savoury oak spice.
Palate: A medium bodied wine with a silky texture and a supple tannin structure. The red fruit flavours and oak spice flavours linger on the long finish.
Cellaring: Will age well with careful cellaring for three to six years.
Food Match: Try this wine with game meats such as duck or venison.
Serve: Room temperature.
WINE ANALYSIS
Alcohol: 13.5
Residual Sugar: 2.0
Titratable Acidity: 5.9
pH: 3.59
Grape Growing:
The fruit for this wine was sourced from 5 vineyards located in the Awatere, Wairau and Southern Valley sub-regions of Marlborough. All fruit for this wine was grown on a standard 2 cane trellis system.
Shoot thinning was carried out during the growing season to ensure a healthy open canopy, and fruit thinning occurred later in the season to ensure all the fruit had concentrated ripe varietal flavours.
Climate: The temperatures were similar to the long term average, but varied greatly with a number of warm days followed by cold spells. Colder conditions over flowering resulted in average yields. In late December, the climate became very warm and dry, ideal conditions for ripening. This fine weather continued over harvest, meaning the vineyards could be picked at ideal ripeness and with intense flavours.
Winemaking: The fruit for this wine was hand harvested in the cool Marlborough autumn mornings. It was later de-stemmed and transferred to various open top fermenting vats in the winery. The fruit was then left to cold soak for 5-6 days prior to fermentation.
Fermentation was carried out with selected yeast in small vats. Extraction was done by hand-plunging (pigeage) 3-4 times daily to ensure gentle colour and flavour extraction. The temperature was allowed to peak at 32°C.
The wine was then pressed off as soon as it reached dryness, and then racked to new (44%), 1 and 2 year old French oak barrels. The heavy pressings were kept separate. The wine was left to mature in barrel and underwent spontaneous malo-lactic fermentation in spring.
After 11 months the wine was removed from barrel, blended and filtered before bottling in March, 2016
