Production
The grapes were destemmed and partially crushed, leaving some whole berries and pumped to open-top fermenters and stainless steel tanks for fermentation. For some blocks the estate use special cold tolerant yeast strains and ferment the wines quite cool (~10-11C), while others were allow to ferment naturally with no added yeast. These fermentations typically are warmer and 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 40% new French and Hungarian oak barrels for malolactic fermentation and ageing. The wines were racked to tank for blending in spring 2016, and then returned to barrel for a further eight months, for a total of 24 months of barrel ageing.
