Tasting Notes 2011
It has a brilliant, green gold colour, and lovely aromas of nectarine and white peach, with a background of oatmeal and cedar. It is elegant and intense, with a mineral tension in the extended palate that suggests considerable cellaring potential.
Closed with leading technology ‘DIAM’ corks. A technical cork these eliminate any possibility of cork taint and, when Elston is well cellared, they provide consistent evolution for every bottle. Elston ’11 will continue to develop in bottle for five years from harvest.
Technical Analysis
pH: 3.3
Total acidity as tartaric: 5.7g/l
Alcohol: 13.5%
Residual sugar: Dry
Winemaking
Each parcel was gently whole-cluster pressed, cold settled, and racked to new and seasoned French oak barrels for fermentation. The resulting wines remained in contact with their yeast lees while undergoing complete malolactic fermentation. The finest lots were selected for further maturation, spending a total of ten months in barrel. The finished wines were then blended and bottled in March 2012.
Vineyards
Between 19 March and 26 March 2011, the separate parcels of grapes were hand harvested from their individual plots within Te Mata Estate’s vineyards.
Origin
Elston is named for Elston Hall in Nottinghamshire, the ancestral home of Charles Darwin’s family. Darwin’s ‘theory of natural selection’ forms the basis of modern evolutionary theory, the foundation of biology. The wyvern symbol of Elston Hall appears on the label.
