Description
TASTING NOTES
Colour
Deep crimson with vivid purple hues.
Aroma
The wine exhibits ripe cassis, red plums and salted liquorice aromas. High notes of cedary oak and violet add further complexity and frame this wines underlying graphite like minerality.
Palate
The palate unfolds in a myriad of layers of red fruit with dark chocolate nuances further enhanced by subtle sweet oak characters. The long and flavoursome finish is well supported by powder-fine juicy tannins.
Cellaring
This finely structured Margaret River wine will continue to improve over the next 5–7 years.
Food pairings: Lamb with garlic mash.
Winemaker Matthew Byrne introduces Evans & Tate’s Classic range. (Video: E&T YouTube)
The 2016 Vintage
A very distinct vintage – the dry, warm Spring and Summer meant it was tracking early but a tropical rain event in January saw 50-70mm fall across the region which pushed back harvest dates slightly – the reds very much appreciated this rainfall.
Just following Easter, late March (29th) saw the tail end of a weak tropical system move through which saw approx. 12mm of rain as it moved through to the South-East. Most reds were picked by this date with the rain being a great little freshener.
Overall, the reds, look exceptional with higher yields than in 2015 meaning better vine balance and rate of ripening.
The 2017 Vintage
A very distinct vintage – the dry, warm spring and summer meant it was tracking early but a tropical rain event in January pushed back harvest dates slightly – the reds very much appreciated this rainfall. Overall, the reds looked exceptional with higher yields than in 2016 meaning better vine balance and rate of ripening.
Winemaking
The fruit from each vineyard block was tasted every 3 days to monitor flavour development to ensure each parcel of fruit was picked at its optimum. Each parcel was picked separately during the coolest part of the night to ensure the fruit reached the winery at the coolest temperature possible.
The fruit was cold soaked which helped produce a fruit driven, aromatic wine with a lush, soft texture. During fermentation, each batch was thoroughly aerated with the grape seeds being removed from the ferment.
This process helped produced a fine, softly textured wine style. Once fermented and pressed, the pressings were returned into the free-run to provide structure and body to the end wine.
A select batch of wine was racked separately off lees to two to five-year-old French oak barriques and hogsheads to mature for 9 months.
Following blending, the wine was lightly fined using fresh, local free-range egg whites and filtered once prior to bottling.
Analysis
- TA: 6.71g/L
- pH: 3.57
