Analysis:
Alcohol: 14.8% | PH: 3.63 | Titratable acidity: 7.48 g/L
Bottling Date: August 13th, 2012
Cellaring: 5 - 7 years, decant before consuming for optimal enjoyment
Tasting Notes:
This wine launches with a brooding nose full of black and red fruits, coffee, cocoa and toasty oak with some complex and interesting notes of violet, smoked meat and ripe tomato. The palate is silky in texture, medium-bodied with bright juicy acidity and lovely dusty, graphite like tannins. The flavours of mixed raspberry and blackberry, orange zest, dried wild herbs and red currant linger nicely on the long finish. The juicy brightness of this wine is well suited to Moroccan spiced braised lamb or thyme wrapped quail grilled on the barbecue. – Rhys Pender, Master of Wine
Wine Making:
The grapes for the 2010 Cabernet Franc were hand-picked at the end of October, 2010 from different parcels on Burrowing Owl Estate Vineyards on Black Sage Road. The grapes were hand-sorted, gently de-stemmed and slightly crushed into our primary fermentation tanks. Fermentation started immediately after crushing, and peeked at 32 degrees Celsius. At the start, three pump-overs occurred per day which gradually decreased with the increasing alcohol content, thus avoiding the extraction of unwanted tannins. The wine underwent approximately 10 days of post-fermentation maceration to enhance the structure and refine the tannins prior to draining and press of the skins. The 2010 Cabernet Franc received 18 months of oak barrel exposure with periodic rackings. The wine produced from the different parcels of the vineyard were aged separately for the first 6 months, and were then blended and aged for the remaining year as one. 100% French oak, 30% new and the rest a blend of 2nd, 3rd and 4th fill.
