MAN O’ WAR IRONCLAD 2022

Winery notes (2022 Vintage)
"Ironclad is named in honour of the 19th Century warships characterised by the iron armour bolted onto their wooden hulls, much as iron courses through the veins of our warm clay hillside vineyards.

2022 Ironclad is untamed in the best sense of the word, with dark f ruits; plums and berries, wildflowers, crushed rock and iodine creating a complex and lifted aroma profile. The palate shows good density balanced with coastal freshness and finishing with a core of powerful tannins. The power of the vintage has been tempered at blending with a rare dominance of Merlot over Cabernet Franc giving the wine good early accessibility but clearly a wine suited to ageing.

Vintage 2022 was excellent for Bordeaux reds, balanced crops, and a hot and dry season for the region resulted in our second largest harvest of 450 tons across all our vineyard sites. Sourced from 14 different vineyard sites across 5 varieties the Ironclad is a classic Right Bank Bordeaux style blend. All the vineyards are dry grown, and hand harvested from steep valley sites sheltered from the cooling winds of the Pacific Ocean. Each parcel is fermented separately with wild yeasts in open top fermenters with a total time in vat of 30 days. Pressed and aged separately in 500 litre French Oak puncheons the wines undergo natural malolactic fermentation and rest on gross lees for 18 months. After rigorous tasting and blending trials, the wines are then racked to blend, aged together for a further 6 months before bottling."

Rated Outstanding & 95/100 Cameron Douglas MS, November 2024 (2022 Vintage)
"An excellent bouquet of power and concentration, dark plums and blackberry fruits, lots of baking spices, smoky wood and new barrel scents. There’s an enticement from the synergy of aromas along with and earthy stony quality adding depth and intrigue. Full-bodied, dry, plenty of tannins and acidity delivery a taut and very youthful mouthfeel. Fruit flavours remain at the core with dark skinned plums and blackberry, there’s also chocolate and brown baking spices, a lick of salt, a long finish and complexity. Best drinking from 2028 through 2038."

93/100 Stephen Wong MW, The Real Review, December 2024 (2022 Vintage)
"Austere with subtle flavours with cocoa and violet, plum and blackberry framed with drying oak and tannin on a broad and very ripe palate with spicy alcoholic warmth. Clenched and unyielding, this needs time to come together as it is really fiercely tannic right now and very chewy. Under the drying structure and alcohol is a core of violet and even some crunchy blackcurrant leaf which bodes well for the wine once it can overcome its hard shell."