Sandalford Margaret River Cabernet Merlot 2021 (Australia)

Description

Oak, Rhubarb, Spice

Garnet with youthful ruby red hues. Blackcurrant and red fruits overlaying plum skin, potpourri, wild mint and bay leaf nuances. Oak spice and cedar notes derived from French oak maturation adding to the appeal. Mid weight and elegant. The generous sweet red fruits, plum skin, and rhubarb nuances are balanced with subtle savoury oak. The firm, fine grained tannin structure is well balanced providing length to this medium bodied wine. This classic Bordeaux blend will cellar for up to 10 years adding complexity with bottle age.

90% Cabernet Sauvignon and 10% Merlot.

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 Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot vines were machine harvested in the cool of the night and transported to the winery for processing. The resulting wines are fresh, balanced and display wonderful varietal fruit characteristics.

The grapes were harvested during the cool of night in mid-April and destemmed to static fermenters. A select yeast isolate was used in the primary fermentation and  lasted for 10 days with pump overs used twice daily during this period to ensureoptimum extraction of colour, flavour and tannins. The wine was then drained and pressed to tank for malolactic fermentation before maturation in a combination of tank and seasoned French oak barrels before blending, fining and bottling.