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Dombeya Samara 2005

The wine has a dense ruby red colour. The nose has complex liquorice, dark cherry and chocolate aromas. The taste is complex, layered with flavours of cool mint, dark chocolate and black berries and finishes dry and balanced.

This would go well with venison, beef, cheese and even a well matured cigar.
variety : Cabernet Sauvignon [ 55% Cabernet Sauvignon, 40% Merlot, 5% Malbec ]
winery : Haskell
winemaker : Rianie Strydom
wine of origin : Coastal
analysis : alc : 13.85 % vol  rs : 3.4 g/l  pH : 3.72  ta : 6.0 g/l  va : 0.70 g/l  so2 : 76 mg/l  fso2 : 20 mg/l  
type : Red  style : Dry   wooded
pack : Bottle  closure : Cork  
AWARDS
2009 Decanter World Wine Awards - Commended
Veritas 2008 - Silver
2008 International Wine & Spirit Competition - Silver & Best in Class
2008 Michelangelo International Wine Awards - Double Gold
2008 Old Mutual Trophy Wine Show - Bronze Medal (79/100)
Calyon Bordeaux Blend Challenge 2008 - Top Ten
in the vineyard : This vintage was my first at Haskell Vineyards, so obviously there was quite a lot to learn. It was also my first in the Helderberg region, which is quite different from the Simonsberg area where I spent the 10 previous years. One thing became quite evident, in that we start harvesting later in this part, but still manage to finish before the Stellenbosch Hills, Simonsberg and Helshoogte areas around Stellenbosch. We had two blocks of Cabernet that came into production this vintage and they ripened two weeks before the older two blocks. The two blocks of Merlot were quite evenly spread in ripening and hung a large crop, which is something we changed in the following vintage in order to get better concentration in the grapes.

All of the vineyards are on North facing slopes. The soils consist of rocky clay of 10% to 15%, which gives good water retention ability. Supplementary irrigation was used sparingly and on a needs basis during the growing season.

about the harvest: The grapes were hand harvested in the early morning hours.

in the cellar : After harvesting the grapes were hand sorted in the cellar before pumped through a mash-cooler to the fermentation tanks for 4 days of cold soaking at 7°C. The mash was then heated to 15° C before inoculation with a French yeast strain. Due to the bigger Merlot berries, we bled off 10% of the juice to secure good colour extraction and concentration. The wine was pumped over the skin and punched down 4 x per day for the first part of the fermentation and after reaching 12° B only twice per day. The Cabernet and the Merlot received a full rack and return with aeration at 12°B. Total time spent on the skins did not exceed 20 days.

Part of the press juice was added to the free run. The older vineyards did their malolactic fermentation in 50% new French oak barrels and 50% third fill barrels. The younger vineyard's wines were only in older (mainly second fill) barrels for 12 months.

We kept the individual blocks separate until prior to blending and bottling. The reason for this is to follow the evolution in the wines over the year, thus giving us more information to use in the creation of our Haskell IV flagship blend. The finished wines were lightly fined.

The Malbec (from the 2006 vintage) component was blended in after all the Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot came out of the barrels. The blend was matured in stainless steel for three months before bottling in January 2007.

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OTHER VINTAGES

Dombeya Samara 2006
Cabernet Sauvignon
Dombeya Samara 2005
Cabernet Sauvignon