Tasting Notes 2009
Cape Crest ’09 is a bright lemon gold colour with aromas of limes, pears and white flowers. Fresh flavours of ripe nectarine, passionfruit, guava and dill extend across a complex, full palate to a long finish. Cape Crest ’09 will continue to evolve in bottle for five years from harvest and is a wonderful match with rich seafood and poultry dishes.
Cape Crest ‘09 is bottled with leading technology ‘DIAM’ corks. These are produced using a liquid form of carbon dioxide which eliminates any possibility of cork taint and, when the wine is well cellared, they provide consistent evolution for every bottle.
Technical Analysis
pH: 3.12
Total acidity: 7g/l
Alcohol: 13.5%
Residual sugar: Dry
Winemaking
Each of the separate grape parcels were destemmed and lightly crushed, then cooled before a brief period of skin contact. Following cold-settling, they were run to a mixture of new and seasoned French oak barrels for fermentation. The resulting wines were aged on lees, with regular stirring, for a further eight months before blending, fining and bottling in December 2009.
Vineyards
Cape Crest ’09 is a blend of 86% sauvignon blanc, 9% semillon, and 5% sauvignon gris. The fully ripe grapes were hand harvested from individual plots within Te Mata Estate’s vineyards between 9 and 16 March 2009.
Origin
Cape Crest and its gannet symbol refer to Cape Kidnappers, the southern point of Hawke Bay, home to the world’s largest mainland colony of these remarkable marine birds.
