Our Wines
2007 Reserve Merlot
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Description
The
2007 Reserve Merlot is a deep plum red coloured wine with a vibrant lifted
nose of red fruits from stone to berries, with a framework of delicious subtle
oak. The palate is totally in balance with bright fruits framed by smoky oak
and the tannins smoothness and strength which nod to its potential. A wine that
has the ability to age 5-15 years, but by drinking it now you can be assured of
a perfect glass of red.
If
drunk with food (which is certainly recommended as there are few greater
pleasures), we suggest the classic combination of roast beef with all the
trimmings with this wine. Other combinations that should provide delight include
pheasant (use truffle oil for basting), Ox tail in a reduced stock, and homemade
beef and kidney pie (don’t skimp on the meat!).
Sealed
under screwcap to ensure the wine made by us arrives to you as we intended it
to.
Reviews
Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front
This is released next month and if you have any bent for
classically-styled merlot, you’d be doing well to grab yourself some
of this.
Great to smell, great to drink, great to contemplate what it’s going
to become. It has concentration of mulberried, blackberried flavour
but really that’s not its game. Its ‘thing’ is structure, a minerally strut of tannin, tobacco-like edges and perfect form in
the mouth. It drinks well the minute you open it, and even better a
day later. There are some eucalypt-y notes and various, subtle,
complexing notes - but there’s no need to list or count them. The
wine is, simply, excellent. I don’t even like merlot but I’ll be
buying some of this.
Rated : 94 Points
Tasted : Mar09
Alcohol : 14%
Price : $35
Closure : Screwcap
Drink : 2012 - 2020
The Wine Front
Technical Details
This is
the first Reserve wine made at Blue Poles, and as such represents the best wine
that we can produce from our site in the heart of Margaret River. 2007 was a
red wine vintage that may go down as one of the region’s best, perfect warm
spring conditions led into a mild but still warm summer that meant the grapes
were perfectly ripe and full of flavour the earliest in our short vineyards
history. All of the vines had little to no disease pressure and were not
damaged by birds that miraculously left the vines alone due to the proliferation
of blossom from the surrounding Marri trees. A wonderful year to be a vigneron!
The
fruit was severely thinned prior to harvest, and just prior to the first and
only time we have used a mechanical harvester, any grapes that were considered
not good “enough to eat” were dropped on the ground. The technical data on
these grapes are as below:
Merlot:
Picked 15 March 2007
Total weight 7,509 kg
Brix 24.8
pH 3.22
TA 5.60
We were fortunate
enough to have Sharna Kowalczuk from Vasse River Wines make our wine and she
completed an exemplarily job with our grapes from arrival through to bottling.
The wine was fermented in a closed vat and continuously “pumped over” to extract
colour and tannins softly, with ferment being completed after 10 days. The wine
was pressed and placed in French oak barrels and stored for 17 months.
Our first reserve wine was
made by tasting and retasting every barrel of wine that we had produced from the
2007 vintage until we came across a combination of 4 barrels that was simply
exemplary. The structure of the wine, the poise and the tautness of all the
wines elements were critical in the selection process – and when combined prior
to bottling we realised that we had managed to produce a very special wine from
our vines in Osmington, Margaret River. Nearly 100% Merlot (there is a touch of
Cabernet Franc); this wine mimics the wines of Pomerol in Bordeaux much to our
delight.
