Viticulture

The year 2003 was the fourth vintage produced from the Staete Landt Vineyard in Marlborough’s Rapaura area. The early season was very difficult with frosts affecting some parts of the vineyard. This reduced crops dramatically and meant that flowering was rather slow and uneven. Fortunately the rest of the season was both very warm and dry with slightly higher temperatures than average. This led to very good ripening conditions for the small crop of Pinot Noir we had. At veraison a small amount of green harvesting was carried out to ensure even ripening of the fruit bunches. By the time we came to harvest the small crop of pinot noir was in excellent condition with very good ripeness and good tannin and colour composition.

The grapes were hand picked from three different Pinot Noir blocks comprising clone 777, clone 115, clone114 and clone 5

Harvest Dates: 26th March – 11th April 2003
Brix: 23.4 – 25.2

Winemaking

Only hand picked grapes were used for this wine. These were de-stemmed only to tank where they under went a cold maceration phase for seven days prior to fermentation and a post ferment maceration of up to 20 days. Total time on skins varied with the fruit lot but the maximum was 25 days. The wine was pressed off and settled briefly before being racked straight to barrels to undergo malo lactic fermentation. The wine was aged in a mixture of 30% new French oak and 70% older French oak barrels.
They were then aged on lees until they were eventually racked in April 2004 when they were blended and returned to barrel.
The wine was aged in barrel for a total of 15 months. Finally the wine was again racked from barrels in June 2004 and was given some polishing filtration before bottling.

Wine Analysis

Alcohol: 13.5%; Acidity: 6.2 g/l; pH: 3.43; Sugar: <2g/l

Tasting Note

This wine was aged in 25% new French oak barrels and 75% older French oak barrels. This has produced a subtle, tightly structured wine with very tight tannin structure fine rich plum and aromatic black cherry aromas of violets with a lovely earthy complexity. This is a full bodied concentrated wine with fine delicate tannins and a long finish.
This wine will repay cellaring for three to five years.