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Villa Maria Cellar Selection 2007 Gimblett Gravels Syrah
For those of you who like Australian Shiraz and don’t know, Syrah is
essentially the same wine, and you don’t have to look across the
Tasman to find a good bottle of this variety. The Hawkes Bay has
superb growing conditions for this style of wine. As for Shiraz and
Syrah, it is just like the different pronunciations of tomato.
The Gimblett Gravels region of the Hawkes Bay, where the fruit for
this wine are grown, is particularly suited to producing quality
Syrah fruit due to its free draining, low fertility soils and warm
temperatures. Villa Maria predominantly sourced the fruit from their
Twyford and Omahu vineyards, where naturally devigourated vines crop
yields, resulting in deep coloured and intensely flavoured red
wines.
When ripe, the fruit was hand harvested, destemmed and crushed into
open-top fermenters. Fermentation was encouraged to peak at
temperatures between 28 degrees and 33 degrees Celsius. Hand
plunging was carried out four times a day and some co-fermentation
with the white Viognier grape was utilised to enhance the bouquet
and delicacy of the wine.
After 30 says on skins, the wine was pressed off to oak barriques.
Once malolactic fermentation was completed, the wine was gently
racked and returned to the barrel for a further 18 months to mature
on light lees without further disturbance. After this time,
individual parcels were selected, blended into tank, lightly
egg-white fined and given a minimal course filtration to bottle.
The resulting Villa Maria Cellar Selection 2007 Syrah I believe more
is more than a match for most of its Australian rivals. It has a
wonderful deep colour with crimson hues, and a bouquet of blueberry,
plum and spices. On the palate, I found this wine to have rich silky
tannins and flavours of ripe berries and a long lingering, almost
peppery finish. In my opinion it is an exceptional wine that is not
only drinking well, but will improve with five years of cellaring.
I would personally prefer to have this wine with a delicious lamb
meal or pepper steak.
Reviewed by Stephen Clark (15/5/2009)
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