Blue Rock Syrah 2020
Winemaker Note
“Vibrant, deep ruby red colour
Highly aromatic! Lovely spice, very warm and comforting baked fruit cake aromas. Dark chocolate, black berry and black Doris plums. Very complex and constantly changing in the glass; smelling violet florals, there’s a stoney minerality and a dusting of wild thyme.
Very elegant, stylish to taste. Full bodied with rich, smooth and ultra fine tannins. As it smells, it tastes; spicey, juicy and plummy with dark chocolate on the finish. Loads of personality and plenty of potential for cellaring. Nice to drink now but I would recommend decanting prior. Will cellar well and improve a lot with around 5 years aging.”
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From the start of the 2019/2020 growing season things looked promising! Great, even budburst with only a few relatively minor frost events. We went into this critical part of the season in the best shape yet in terms of our organic regime, with full under vine cultivation completed along with extensive spring inter-row cropping to ensure the vines had the best possible start. Conditions through spring were relatively normal; plenty of wind, some rain but not too much! With a classic Martinborough North West/South West flow. Flowering was very successful and a good sized crop was on the cards! The ripening season was long and dry but not overly hot. If one had to make any complaint at all it may have been that it was perhaps a little too dry! As we practice dry farming there were signs of water stress in the canopy across some of the blocks. Welcome rain arrived just after the start of harvest but in the main conditions for picking were excellent and we had the rare pleasure of picking exactly when we wanted too! I feel strongly that 2020 will go down in the books as a great vintage for Martinborough.
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Majority of bunches were de-stemmed directly into 2 x three ton open topped fermenters. Every effort was made to preserve as much “whole berry” as possible. Around 15% of the clusters were kept intact for whole bunch fermentation. These bunches were gently tipped on top of the de-stemmed fruit. This technique, along with the use of cooling helps to ensure a slow onset of full fermentation allowing the native non–saccharomyces yeasts time to perform an initial ferment before the stronger, more dominant native saccharomyces yeast strains take over and complete full alcoholic fermentation. We grow a few rows of Viognier at Blue Rock which is harvested at the same time as the Syrah. Once the juice is pressed off the Viognier skins are added to the Syrah ferment. Total maceration time for this vintage was 20 – 30 days before gentle pressing. Once the wine had settled in tank for three or four days it was transferred to French oak puncheons for maturation. Malolactic fermentation completed naturally during the winter of 2020. In total the wine spent 12 months in barrel. New oak in the finished wine is around 20%. The only additions were sulphur dioxide post malolactic fermentation, followed by a small top up prior to bottling. Bottled Unfined and Unfiltered.
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Drink with red wine braised beef cheeks and pomme puree. Be great with a firm cheese as well.
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pH 3.66
TA 4.5 g/L
RS <1.0 g/L
Alc 14 %
