Tasting notes
Dark Chocolate
Cherry
Leather
Production
The estate machine harvest their Merlot on the Black Sage bench in the early hours of the morning to ensure it arrives at the winery nice and cold. The grapes are then destemmed and partially crushed, leaving some whole berries and pumped to stainless steel tanks for fermentation. These fermentations are much less vigorous, leading to a long, slow (6-8 weeks long) gentle extraction of colour, tannin and flavour. The wines are then pressed and racked to a mix of French, American and Hungarian oak barrels, for malolactic fermentation and aging. Maturation ranges from 14-18 months depending on how the wines are tasting, before being racked to tank, blended and finally bottled.
