ATTRIBUTES

Merlot Cabernet is a famous blend from the Bordeaux region of France. The two grape components compliment each other beautifully. This wine has lovely dark fruit aromas, with black olive and forest floor characters. It is “brooding” with the nose opening up after some aeration to very variable characters of violets and mocha.  The palate is juicy and vibrant,  with fruit cake spice and medium bodied tannin structure, and long silky tannins on the finish. Longer term barrel maturation has given this wine elegance and gentle tannin structure and has made this wine is ready for immediate enjoyment or short to medium term cellaring.

WINEMAKING

The growing season for the 2020 vintage was fairly mild with some warmer heat spikes during the summer which helped ripen the tannins and fruit evenly.  The Merlot and Cabernet grapes were machine harvested by our brand new state of the art Pellenc harvester in the coldest part of the morning on 6th March 2020.  This vintage was the first of the reds to be processed onsite in our new winery on Whillas Road, Port Lincoln. The two parcels were picked separately, but crushed into the same open stainless steel fermenter for co-fermentation.  The fermentation on skins lasted for 14 days, in which it received daily pumpovers and twice daily plunges to ensure good colour and tannin extraction. After 14 days, the finished ferment was left on skins for a further 10 days before being basket pressed.  The wine was then pumped to barrels, with 40% new French oak, and then 2-3 year old French oak making up the balance.

The wine was twice racked from barrel into stainless steel before returning to barrel for a total of 24 months. The wine was bottled in June 2023. 

VINEYARDS

Situated on the Teakle property in Port Lincoln, 2 kilometres from the foreshore, with 150 meters elevation.  The soils are rich combination of sandy loam topsoil overlying a friable red-brown clay loam subsoil.  The moderately warm summer temperatures and maritime breeze allow perfect ripening conditions in the vineyard. The long sunshine hour days encourage even ripening of the grapes, while the gentle breeze helps cool the bunches, retaining the beautiful natural acidity.

Alcohol 13.6%