Late Harvest Riesling (375 ml)

Viticulture

The fruit for this wine was grown at Ashmore Vineyard in Fairhall, adjacent to the mouth of the Brancott Valley on gravelly clay-loam soils, conditions more typical of the Southern Valleys than the Wairau plains. This 18-year-old, organically farmed vineyard is trained on a two-cane VSP (vertical shoot positioning) trellis. The vineyard was hand-harvested with considerable botrytis infection in two lots, the first batch being picked on 11 May at 28 brix and the second on 26 May at 42 brix after a period of dry windy weather.

Winemaking

The grapes were whole bunch pressed using a very low maceration press cycle. The resulting batches of juice were cold-settled with a light fining and the clear juice was racked and inoculated in stainless steel tanks using cultured yeast. The two batches were blended during fermentation.

The fermentation was stopped in July, retaining120 g/l residual sugar. The wine remained on light yeast lees for a further five months prior to bottling in December with an alcohol of 12.0%, pH 3.09 and acidity of 7.7 g/l.