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Cellar Foot Mourvèdre 2010

Herbal and "garrigue" - like aromas are the first to appear after opening a bottle. These subside after a few hours giving rise to much more intense dark fruit. The palate is very intense because of the grape's natural tendency towards higher acidity and tannin structure. Think savoury, spicy and earthy flavours. The wine benefits from decanting at this stage but has great ageing potential.

variety : Mourvedre [ 100% Mourvèdre ]
winemaker : Craig Hawkins
wine of origin : West Coast
analysis : alc : 13.5 % vol  rs : 2.1 g/l  pH : 3.53  ta : 5.9 g/l  
type : Red  style : Dry  
pack : Bottle  closure : Cork  
in the vineyard : The wine was made from a single block of 0.9ha; the bushvines are 15 years of age. The block is situated on a north west facing slope on Lammershoek granite and is farmed dry-land and organically.

about the harvest: 2010 was a very cool growing season dominated by high rainfall in late October. It was an extremely good grape growing year and acids were naturally very high because of the cool temperatures leading up to harvest. But because Mourvedre is one of the later grape varieties to be harvested it survived the heat waves that appear in early February. Picked on taste the grapes came in at a potential alcohol of 13.5%. Like all the grapes on the farm they were harvested by hand in small 20kg lug boxes on the 15th of February. Yields of between 3-4tons/ha were achieved.
in the cellar : The grapes were fermented in an open wooden fermenter with 70-80 % whole bunches. The rest was de-stemmed "whole-berry" on top of this. To release some juice for fermentation the grapes were lightly foot trodden and then left to ferment spontaneously. Pigeage (manual working of the cap) by foot was done only when needed; there is no recipe for making wine. We rather let the tank tell us when it is the right time to work the cap or mix the juice.
 
The purpose of the stems is to add another taste dimension and "tension" to the wine. Only ripe stems were used.
 
Fermentation on the skins was not very long and the juice was pressed off on taste (in this case it was only 2-3 weeks) into old 500l casks where malolactic and any other fermentation was finished off. A small amount of sulphur (15ppm) was added after one year and the wine was never racked off its gross lees but rather blended and then put back on the original lees in the same casks.

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Cellar Foot Mourvèdre 2010
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