Luddite Shiraz 2010

Very dark purple and garnet tones. Jumps out the glass. Dark fruit, cinnamon, mace and black pepper with a hint of fynbos perfume. Bold Dark fruit, savoury spice with beautifully balanced fruit towards the end. This fruit is complimented with bold, ripe tannin and a hint of good barrel use.

“The 2010 vintage again followed the pattern where even years are warm years. Not only was it warm but also incredibly dry with very little rainfall from November to May of this growing season. This resulted in a small, concentrated crop with great flavour intensity and the harvest being slightly earlier than normal. The overall ripening was very even with all the clonal batches ripening within a week of each other. Four main batches were therefore fermented in large stainless steel tanks with regular pump-overs. Due to a new cooling plant, we were able to do our fermentations between 22 and 24 °C. This resulted in a long, slow fermentation with plenty of time on the skins to build structure. We also allowed the malolactic fermentation to take place on the skins during post maceration after which the wine was pressed into tank.

After settling in tank, the wine was transferred to barrel of which 25% new oak was used. 95% of the barrels were French Oak and 5% Hungarian Oak. The rest of the barrels were 2^nd, 3^rd and 4^th fill. All four batches of wine were kept separately and remained in barrel for 24 months after which we blended the different batches to create the best possible wine for this vintage.”