Church Road Merlot Cabernet

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Church Road

Hawke's Bay Merlot Cabernet 2002

The first vintage of this wine to be Merlot Cabernet, this full-bodied, complex barrique-fermented Merlot Cabernet is true to the Church Road style.

Crafted from ripe Hawke's Bay grapes using traditional French winemaking techniques, this premium wine marries ripe, concentrated fruit flavours with spicy oak complexities.

Winemaker's Notes

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Release date: 22 August 2003
Variety: Merlot 61%, Cabernet Sauvignon 26%, Malbec 12%
Region: 100% Hawke's Bay

Description

This wine is a full-bodied, complex Bordeaux-style red.

Colour: Deep, rich red with a bright hue.

Aromas: On the nose, lively berry fruit characters are complemented by spicy French oak and savoury complexities.

Palate: A complex, dry red wine with concentrated fruit flavours and a firm backbone of tannin, balanced by soft acidity and an attractive, fleshy mid-palate. The finish is long and ripe.

Recommended Cellaring

This wine will reward careful cellaring for up to six years. Over this time the primary berry fruit characters will diminish and be replaced by more complex flavours and aromas. Colour evolution will accompany these changes.

Vineyard

The first vintage of this wine with Merlot as the dominant variety, this Church Road Merlot Cabernet has been produced from a range of low-vigour vineyard sites in the Hawke's Bay region.

The key to producing high quality red wine lies in the ability to manage crop levels and vine canopies to achieve small, well-exposed berries. This ensures good levels of colour and tannin as well as ripe flavours and low acidity.

Harvest

The 2002 vintage was very good for red wines in Hawke's Bay. With heat levels well above the 30-year average and low rainfall, we achieved very ripe sugars with low acidity and excellent concentration of flavour, colour and tannin.

Brix at harvest: 22-23.5°

Winemaking

Winemakers: Tony Prichard, Chris Scott

This 2002 Church Road Merlot Cabernet was made using traditional Bordeaux varieties and Bordeaux-based winemaking techniques.

Grapes were crushed to fermenters and the wine gently circulated over the skins for an extended period to extract colour, tannin and flavour. After draining from skins, the wine was encouraged to undergo malolactic fermentation in French barriques.

The wine remained in French oak barrels (43% new, 20% one-year-old and the balance two-year-old) for approximately 14 months to extract oak flavour, stabilise colour and evolve the tannins.

Analysis

Alcohol: 13.5% by volume
pH: 3.65
Total acidity: 5.9 g/L as tartaric

Vintages

1992-1997, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001(Cabernet Merlot), 2002, 2003, 2004*(Merlot Cabernet)

* currently available vintage(s)

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