La Motte Chardonnay 2005

The wine has intense fruit salad aromas well balanced with straw and nut/wood flavours. Orange peel is prominent on the medium-full palate, while the balanced acid makes for a refreshing, lingering after-taste.

Essentially a fine-food wine, with caviar, snails, carpaccio, patÃ©, crayfish (Cape rock lobster), prawns, langoustine, mussels, perlemoen (abalone) and creamy cheese.

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variety : Chardonnay [ 100% Chardonnay ]

winery : La Motte

winemaker : Edmund Terblanche

wine of origin : Coastal

analysis : alc : 13.61 % vol rs : 1.3 g/l pH : 3.46 ta : 5.85 g/l

type : White style : Dry body : Full taste : Fruity wooded

pack : Bottle

AWARDS

2007 Concours Mondial de Bruxelles â€“ Gold Medal
Veritas 2006 - Bronze
Michelangelo Awards 2006 - Silver Medal
**** John Platter 2007

in the vineyard : Location of La Motte
33 53 latitude, 19.5 longtitude Franschhoek Valley, South Africa
Altitude: 200m

Vineyards blocks: 6 (4,9 ha)
Soil types: Clovelly
Direction planted: north-south
Density: 4 630 vines per hectare (2,7 x 0,8)
Root stock: Richter 99
Clones: CY3
Year planted: 1997
Trellising: Perold
Irrigation: Drip

Vineyards are managed to maintain a perfect balance between leaf coverage and yield.

about the harvest: For a second year in succession, La Motte experienced hotter and drier conditions than the long-term average. Suffient cold, however, occured during late winter, followed by warm weather during spring. Budding was faster than usual and even. Growth was lush, persumably due to nitrogen precipitation caused by thunder conditions - regular leaf management was necessary. Harvesting was two weeks earlier than normal and started at La Motte on 2 February. Despite the hot summer, varietal flavours were good for an early varietal such as Chardonnay - good analysis was achieved. Grapes were also very healthy.

in the cellar : Immediatly after de-stalking, the juice was seperated from the skins. Approximately 50% of the bunches were whole-pressed. The clean juice were transferred to 225-litre barrels, where it was inoculated with yeast and fermented at between 17-20Â°C. Malolactic fermentation was also in barrels. One 3rd of the juice was fermented in stainless steel tanks (non-malolactic). After fermentation the lees was stirred regularly over a 11 month period. A third of the French and Hungarian barrels in which the wine was matured was new. The components were blended subsequent to maturation. On 21 June 2005 the wine was bottled in La Motte cellar and after 2 months of bottle maturation, 1 200 cartons (12 x 750ml) were released as 2005 La Motte Chardonnay.

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