Petane Viognier 2019

The Drinking

With a nose of saffron, lime zest and smoked hazel nuts, this is a generous, lush full-bodied wine that will only get more interesting over the next 5-7 years. Serve with anything spicy, kormas or South East Asian curries.

The Growing

Viognier can be a fickle difficult grape to grow, it can have a good yield one year followed by a very low yield the next, after a very light crop in 2018we were hoping for more than 2 barriques in 2019, the wine gods were listening and we doubled production with 4 barrels, one new French oak Immersion barrel in the mix. Hot dry conditions prevailed for the entire vintage this will go down as one of the classic Hawke’s Bay growing seasons. Viognier to fully ripen requires a long summer/autumn and this was well and truly delivered in 2019.

The Making

The handpicked grapes were WBP the juice went into a settling tank over night the next day the juice was run out into our Saury Immersion viognier barrels. A cool slow ferment began after a few days, so slow that two of the primary ferments went on the entire 8 months that the wine was in barrel! After tasting and much happy discussion the decision was made to stop the ferment just prior to final blending and bottling, and retain some residual sugar as this adds to the complexity and rounds out the wine.

TECHNICAL NOTES

PICKING DATE    8 April

BRIX    23.5

pH   3.71

ACIDITY   4.72

RS    6.79

BOTTLING   29 Jan 2020