Church Road Reserve Merlot Cabernet

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Church Road Reserve

Hawke's Bay Merlot Cabernet 2003

Crafted from select low-yielding vineyard sites in Hawke’s Bay, Church Road Reserve Merlot Cabernet 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: February 2007
Merlot Merlot 46.5%, Cabernet Sauvignon 42%, Malbec 11.5%
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 plum characters are complemented by spicy French oak and complexities of liquorice and cigar-box.
Palate: Ripe fruit and a backbone of fine-grained tannins are balanced by soft acidity and an attractive, fleshy mid-palate. 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 diminish and be replaced by more complex, earth and leather flavours and aromas. The colour will also evolve, and the tannin will soften further.

Food matching

A wonderful match with vanilla duck confit and Merlot Cabernet Jus.

Harvest

The 2003 harvest period was warm and relatively dry, with notably warm nights which helped the fruit reach good flavour and tannin ripeness at lower sugar levels than normal.

Winemaking

Winemaker: Tony Prichard, Chris Scott

This wine was made using traditional Bordeaux-based winemaking techniques. After the grapes are crushed, we employ regular pumpovers, 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.

The wine remained in French oak barrels (60% new and the balance one year old) for approximately 16 months to extract oak flavour, stabilise colour and evolve the tannins. Barrels were rackedand returned every three months to enhance evolution of the wine.

The key to this wine is selecting very ripe fruit from low-yielding vineyard sites to produce rich flavours with strong concentration and structure. Traditional Bordeaux winemaking techniques then direct the style toward a complex wine that will continue to develop slowly and gracefully in the bottle over time.

Analysis

Alcohol: 13.5% by volume
Total acidity: 5.65 g/l as tartaric

Vintages

1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002*, 2003, 2004

* currently available vintage(s)

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