Hunter Valley Wills Hill Shiraz 2009

Region
Hunter Valley

Appearance
Bright medium red with ruby garnet hues.

Bouquet
Lifted dark berries with complex spice and earth aromas with a hint of graphite.

Palate
A fine, detailed, medium bodied Hunter Shiraz with intergrated tannins and exotic spices. Mouth filling flavours of dark berries and rich spicey fruit.

Vintage Conditions
Vintage conditions treated us to mild and overcast weather with humid conditions offering a challenging maturation period requiring fastidious fruit selection. This allowed fruit of the highest quality to be hand picked
at optimum maturity.

Winemaking
Fruit was sourced from our Wills Hill Vineyard from the blocks planted in the soil of duplex red clay loam containing decomposed laterite granite known as “Ironstone”. Fruit was picked in the cool of the morning by hand and transported to the winery in small 10kg buckets. Hand sorting is then conducted to eliminate sub-standard bunches, 50% of fruit is placed whole on the bottom of a stainless steel open fermenter, 50% of the fruit is gently de-stemmed to maintain the berries intact and tipped on top of the whole
fruit, this preserves the inherent fruit aroma and offers the best possible expression of the vineyard in the resultant wine. Cold maceration for 72 hours allows for a slow controlled initiation of fermentation with indigenous yeasts to enhance complexity and colour extraction, fermentation was over
12 days reaching a maximum of 28C, post fermentation maceration takes a further 5 days with plunging before pressing.

Wine Analysis
Alc/Vol : 12.5 % pH : 3.55% TA : 5.8 g/L

Cellaring
Will continue to develop with good cellaring conditions ( 14 degrees celsius ) over the next 8-10 years.

Suggested Cuisine
A good slice of Stelvio cheese and ciabata bread dusted with semolina.

General Characteristics
Dry     Medium Bodied