Appearance: Clear amber/orange colour.
Bouquet: Spiced honey, dried nectarines and pears.
Palate: Bone dry, rippled with minerality and tannins. This wine is at the cross roads of a red wine for its tannins and texture, a cool climate white wine for its intense minerality and a barrel fermented white wine for its charming oxidative notes.
Technical Analysis
Location: 45 degrees South
Low cropping estate grown grapes for this wine were hand harvested in April from Aurum’s Te Wairere vineyard in the Lowburn area of Central Otago.
Climate: A long warm autumn with hot dry days and cool nights allowed an extended ripening of fruit still holding good acidity.
Soils: Fluvial, glacial silts and gravels.
Vine age: 9 –13 year old vines
Trellis Style: VSP
Winemakers comments
This wine is made using ancient techniques. The grapes underwent fermentation in large clay Cretian pithoi with their skins. After extensive post maceration, the wine was drained through muslin cloth and aged in oak barrels for 12 months. The wine was then hand bottled, unfined and unfiltered.
Alcohol: 13%
Residual sugar: 1.5g/L