Church Road Reserve Merlot Cabernet

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Church Road Reserve

Hawke's Bay Cabernet Merlot 2005

Hand harvested from select low-yielding vineyard sites in Hawke’s Bay, Church Road
Reserve Cabernet/Merlot marries ripe, concentrated fruit with spicy oak complexities to create a complex Bordeaux-style wine with a serious palate structure.

 

Winemaker's Notes

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Released: January 2007
Cabernet Sauvignon 73%, Merlot 27%
Region: 100% Hawke's Bay

Description

A wine of power and elegance, this is an earthy, rich Bordeaux-style wine
built around a core of ripe Hawke’s Bay fruit.
Colour: Rich and vibrant red.
Aromas: Dark berry fruit and black cherry characters are complemented by integrated toast and spice from French oak and complexities of dried bayleaf, earth, cedar and a hint of minerality.
Palate: The wine has excellent flesh and concentration, balanced by a backbone of ripe, finegrained tannins. The finish is long and persistent.

Cellaring

This wine will reward careful cellaring for up to ten years or more. Over this
time the primary berry fruit characters will give way to more complex earth and leather flavour and aroma, while the tannin will continue to soften.

Harvest

The hallmark of the 2005 vintage was the warm, dry summer and early Autumn which ensured excellent fruit ripeness and concentration. This wine was harvested off low vigour soils in the Gimblett Gravels Sub region. The lowest vigour, lowest cropping vines in each block were identified for selective hand picking.

Winemaking

Winemaker: Chris Scott

This wine was made using traditional Bordeaux-based winemaking techniques. After the grapes are crushed, we employ regular pumpovers, punch downs, aeration and long macerations to develop flavour complexity, stabilise colour and to meld the tannins into the wine. We taste daily to monitor progress, and to determine the optimum time to drain the wine off skins. Average maceration length was 3 weeks for merlot and 4 weeks for Cabernet Sauvignon.

Analysis

Alcohol: 13.5% by volume
Total acidity: 5.73 g/L as tartaric

Vintages

2005*

* currently available vintage(s)

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