Sandalford Estate Reserve Cabernet Sauvignon 2021 (Australia)

Description

Blackcurrant, Chocolate, Oak

Deep garnet with brick red hues. Blackberry, cassis, fresh tobacco, cedar and chocolate box notes on the nose. There is an overlay of camphor and oak spice with floral violet notes adding complexity. This is classic Margaret River Cabernet. An elegant, medium bodied wine, with sweet red and black berries, camphor, vanilla and savoury oak spice flavours. The fine-grained tannins are soft and in balance with the fruit and acid. There is a nice structure and softness to the wine which makes for appealing drinking in the immediate term. However, will reward cellaring over the next ten years.

The 2021 vintage could be best described as challenging. A reflection of the wetter than average summer impacting picking decisions. Our Wilyabrup vineyard however fared well and produced fresh, bright, flavoursome fruit to make wines from. The low yielding old vine Cabernet Sauvignon produced a moderate crop and was machine harvested in the cool of the night before transportation to the winery for processing. The resulting red wines made this year are elegant in style displaying varietal typicity.

This Cabernet Sauvignon is sourced from plantings dating back to 1970, off the original Sandalford vineyard located in Wilyabrup, Margaret River. The fruit was de-stemmed to small open and static fermenters before a selected yeast isolate was used to inoculate the must. Routine pump overs aided in extracting colour, flavour and tannin. After 10 days on skins, the wine was pressed to tank and inoculated for Malolactic Fermentation. The wine was racked and transferred to Bordeaux coopered French oak barriques (30% new) for 16 months maturation before blending. A small percentage of Malbec (4%) was included into the final blend to provide depth, interest and complexity. This wine was made without finings and was filtered before bottling.