Greywacke Marlborough Late Harvest Riesling 2011 (375ml)

Description

A wine of intense aromatics – exotic honeysuckle blossom, candied lemon and vanilla custard, infused with a hint of cloves. The luscious palate has a marmalade-like combination of lemons and limes mingled with the richness of honeyed apricots and a dollop of crème caramel. Silky, succulent and harmonious – finishing with a lively citrusy crispness.

The fruit for this wine was grown at Ashmore Vineyard in Fairhall, adjacent to the mouth of the Brancott Valley on gravelly clay-loam soils, conditions more typical of the Southern Valleys than the Wairau plains. This 18-year-old, organically farmed vineyard is trained on a two-cane VSP (vertical shoot positioning) trellis. The vineyard was hand-harvested with considerable botrytis infection in two lots, the first batch being picked on 11 May at 28 brix and the second on 26 May at 42 brix after a period of dry windy weather.

The grapes were whole bunch pressed using a very low maceration press cycle. The resulting batches of juice were cold-settled with a light fining and the clear juice was racked and inoculated in stainless steel tanks using cultured yeast. The two batches were blended during fermentation.