Heritage Tasting Notes 2015
COLOUR: Deep ruby, very intense.
AROMA: Savoury and complex aromas of exotic spices, dark berry fruits and floral notes. Hints of cocoa and leather.
PALATE: The palate is immensely dense and concentrated with luscious black fruit flavours integrating with oak spice. The wine has an intense and yet silky fine tannin structure, great length and many years of aging potential.
ANALYSIS: Alc. 14.0% | pH 3.44 | TA 5.3
WINEMAKER NOTES
This wine is made with a sense of place. The steep clay hillsides at Auntsfield give us fruit with great density, complexity and tannin structure. Winemaking is carried out with a desire to reveal these characters in the wine. The fruit is hand harvested and gravity fed into open top oak vessels with a proportion of fruit being whole bunch fermented. These are then hand plunged (with our bare hands) once fermentation begins. The wine is kept on skins for an extended period following fermentation before being aged in oak for 18 months.
VITICULTURALIST NOTES
The 2015 season offered up many challenges but particularly a cold windy Spring which reduced yields to very low levels. The fruit for this wine comes from the very top of our steepest hillside at Auntsfield Estate. The cropping level is naturally very low (1kg per vine) from these very old slow growing vines that are exposed to the hillside winds and rock-hard clay.
