Analysis:
Alcohol: 14% | PH: 3.76 | Titratable acidity: 6.1 g/L
Bottling Date: June 2019
Cellaring: 5+ years
Tasting Notes:
An intense, modern example of BC Syrah with lots of black pepper and charred meat notes, powerful blueberry, black plum and blackberry fruit. A little violet, fig, baking spice and nicely integrated oak complete a complex nose. The full bodied and silky textured palate is fresh with balancing crisp acidity and ripe tannins and more black and blue fruits along with spiced shortbread and some savoury game meat, graphite and dried local sage notes on the long finish. Pair with five-spice rubbed loin of lamb or a peppercorn crusted grilled ahi tuna.
Wine Making:
The 2017 growing season got off to a cool, slow start but the vines quickly caught up for lost time in the summer months. The warm temperatures through August and September combined with the cool nights of late summer and early fall produced bold fruit flavors and retained acidity.
The Syrah grapes were harvested by hand from Burrowing Owl's Black Sage Bench and Osoyoos Bench "Eva" Vineyards on October 17, 18 and Nov. 6, 2017. They were hand sorted, de-stemmed and gently crushed before being gravity fed into the fermentation tanks. The grapes were inoculated with our preferred yeast strain and fermented for 14 days under temperature control. The juice was then pressed off and moved into barrels to allow for malolactic fermentation followed by ageing. The wine was aged for 16 months in a combination of French (55%), American (33%), and Hungarian (10%) barrels selected for their ability to underline the natural flavor profile of the wine. Racked off its lees several times during its ageing, the wine was bottled unfiltered in June 2019.
