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Buy OnlineGold Medal & 95/100 – Decanter World Wine Awards 2023
Gold Medal – New Zealand International Wine Show 2023
Selected as one of Dish Magazine's Top 12 NZ Syrahs of 2023
Winery notes (2021 Vintage)
"The wine is medium to deep red, with aromas that showcase the red fruit elements of Hawkes Bay Syrah, including raspberries with undertones of wood spice and pepper. In the mouth the wine is soft and generous with flavours like the nose of red berries and jam, with an underlying acidity providing elegance and length. Delicious as a young wine it will also reward cellaring.
Upon arrival at the winery the individual vineyard parcels were transferred to small 5 tonne open topped concrete fermenters for fermentation with wild vineyard yeasts and 15% whole bunch. Once active the ferments were managed by hand to gently extract colour and tannin. After a period of post fermentation maceration the grapes were gently pressed and transferred to French oak barrels for 17 months ageing in small 228 litre and large format 500 and 600 litre puncheons were utilised. 12% were new."
95/100 Judges' Comments, Decanter World Wine Awards (2021 Vintage)
"A generosity of juicy raspberry, plum and blackcurrant fruit infused with a heady violet spice; concentrated and powerful with a lush chocolate richness and classy finish."
4 ½ Stars Michael Cooper, May 2023 (2021 Vintage)
"Offering fine value, the 2021 vintage was grown at two sites, in the Gimblett Gravels and at Bay View, and matured for 17 months in French oak puncheons and barriques (12 per cent new). Full-coloured, it is a strongly varietal wine, with excellent density of ripe plum and black pepper flavours, savoury notes adding complexity, and lots of youthful vigour. Best drinking 2025+."
Dish Magazine (2021 Vintage)
"A seriously attractive, complex wine heaving with texture, floral aromatic, exotic spices, and sweetly concentrated fruit at every level. A very stylish wine that’s still super youthful and one that our judges felt had huge cellaring potential. Stylish and showing taut, finely tuned tannins."
Reviews for previous vintages below…
Rated Excellent & 93/100 Cameron Douglas MS, April 2022 (2020 Vintage)
"A very enticing bouquet of ripe red berry fruits – raspberry and black cherry, some red licorice and soft pepper spices. A core of fruit flavours on the palate reflect the bouquet accentuated by tannins and a back bone of acidity. Delicious, fresh, youthful and taut. A lovely example with best drinking from late 2022 through 2029."
91/100 Sam Kim, Wine Orbit, March 2022 (2020 Vintage)
"Pristine and elegantly perfumed, the wine shows sweet plum, raspberry, floral and mixed spice aromas, followed by a beautifully rounded palate offering youthful fruit intensity and fine-grained tannins. Elegantly composed and expressed with a lengthy succulent finish. At its best: now to 2027."
Rated Excellent, 5 Stars & 93/100 NZ Wine Rater, March 2022 (2019 Vintage)
"Attractive, fruit-forward, expressive nose with blueberry, black doris plum, spice and a hint of cracked pepper. Full bodied, ripe, plush style with a soft mid-palate and all the wine-making trimmings… good concentration, well-worked tannins and plenty of toasty oak. Will reward air time before serving."
4 ½ Stars Yvonne Lorkin, June 2021 (2019 Vintage)
"Glossy and gorgeous in the glass, it’s heaving with violets, soft black pepper, dark cherry, damson plum and redcurrant characters that assail the nostrils and flood the tastebuds. With fresh, ultra-vibrant acidity adding vavoom to the mid-palate and fine-grained tannins elongating the flavours, it’s a total star for the money. Gordon Russell is an evil genius winemaker, that’s for certain."
