Family Reserve Shiraz 2018 6x75cl

A dark brooding wine on both the bouquet and palate. The depth of flavour is astounding and the dark plums on the mid-palate give way to a long finish with the slightest hint of white pepper. With both savoury and fruit notes this wine is a very versatile wine to enjoy with food, but be assured the mouth filling, supple tannin structure will ensure that one will be well rewarded by cellaring this wine carefully for a few years before enjoying!

Vineyards

Shiraz thrives in Mediterranean climates and the fruit showed excellent concentration whilst retaining freshness and elegance.

Vintage

2018 is the 3rd dry season that we have experienced in a row and has seen the region experience severe drought conditions. That said, for the past number of years, we have been approaching the management of our vineyards from a point of view of sustainability, with special attention to minimizing our use of supplementary irrigation, and we reaped the benefit of that in this season. Winter arrived late and with an early and warm Spring we experienced rather uneven bud-break. This paired with a few small rain events during flowering, especially on our Cabernet vineyards, led to one of the most challenging growing seasons in recent memory! This put a lot of pressure on our team to carefully manage the vineyards to mitigate the uneven shoot-growth and uneven ripening to ensure grapes that were as close to optimal ripeness as possible for the team in the cellar. Owing to the lack of supplemental irrigation some of the whites were harvested a little earlier than normal to ensure we maintained good natural acidities and we were particularly happy with the quality of our dry-grown Chenin Blanc blocks. Later in the harvest things slowed down quite a bit and we think this was due to a combination of higher than normal vine stress earlier in the season combined with particularly low night time temperature that began toward the end of February. This allowed a number of the reds to ripen slowly and alleviate some of the “unevenness” seen in the various vineyards. While 2018 might not be the most classic red vintage I think it will result in lovely rich, plush reds that will be immensely enjoyable to drink!! (Especially while we wait for the tight and fresh 2017’s to come around!!) It will definitely be remembered as one of the more challenging ones for the team but, all in all we very happy with the end result for the 2018 harvest and hope you will enjoy the wines that are released in due course.

Winemaking

Grapes were hand harvested early in the morning, de-stemmed and sorted before being transferred to stainless steel tank for fermentation. The perfect structure in the wine was achieved through a combination of open and closed pump overs and careful monitoring to ensure the best balance possible. Maturation took place for 20 months in 70% new French oak barrels

Enjoy with:

• Grilled and Roasted Red Meats
• Casseroles/Stews
• Mature Strong Cheeses

Perfect with a roast leg of lamb & potatoes