Elgo Estate

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Deeply coloured and possessing a rich, lifted aroma of ripe blood plum, black cherries, blackberries, black pepper, nutmeg, vanilla, cinnamon and cloves. The wine fills the mouth with rich ripe plum, blackberries, glacé cherry fruit and sweet spices. Abundant fine and ripe tannins coat the mouth, conferring an attractive shape and impressive length to the fleshy,full-bodied palate.

The 2005 – 2006 growing season commenced with a wet and warm spring and ended with a dry and cool to warm autumn. Wet and windy conditions through flowering resulted lower than average crop levels leading to clean and intensely flavoured fruit. The fruit for the 2006 Elgo Estate Shiraz was primarily sourced from our Tarcombe Valley Vineyard which is the warmest of our three vineyards. This wine was hand plunged in open fermenters and displays ripe fruit characters with typical cool climate spices of pepper and cloves. When harvested, the fruit was merely de-stemmed before being transferred to open-topped fermenters and chilled down to 8 - 10ºC for three days. The fermenters are then warmed up to around 16 – 18 ºC through a process of “drain and return” and permitted to spontaneously commence fermentation. For the next ten days, the fermenters were plunged up to three times daily before being covered and left for twenty-six days, during which careful assessment is made each day for tannin development and overall harmony. The wine is drained off under gravity and the skins raked into the basket press. A couple of days after pressing the combined free-run and pressings wine is racked off gross lees into a selection of French Oak barrels sourced from Burgundian Cooperages, of which 60% were new and the balance second use. The wine remains in barrel for 24 months before removal and blending.

The 2006 Elgo Estate Shiraz can be enjoyed now to revel in the almost luscious black fruitand profusion of tannins, and would shine being served with venison, jugged hare or beef Burguignon. Greater rewards will result from careful cellaring as the wine evolves, revealing more and more elements of itself, up until 2020.

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