Today’s tasting is the last of six Hawkes bay Syrahs which Wine-Searcher’s Wine Director, David Allen MW and the team have been tasting as the start of our winemaking project. Today’s wine is a little different as instead of being predominantly from the Bridge Pa Triangle this is instead made from fruit sourced from the High Country Estate. The wine is De La Terre Winery’s Reserve Syrah 2021
De La Terre is Hawke’s Bay’s only earth brick winery. It is situated on the Napier-Taihape Road, about twenty minutes’ drive from Taradale or Hastings. It is a small family-run business, owned and operated by Tony and Kaye Prichard. Their first vintage was 2009. Their approach to winemaking is one of minimum intervention.
Tony started his winemaking career over 30 years ago working for Montana Wines in Gisborne, producing large volumes of wines for the New Zealand and export markets. In 1990, Tony moved to Hawke’s Bay to become Chief Winemaker at the Church Road Winery, also part of Montana Wines, but producing smaller volumes and more specialist wines.
At Church Road, Tony worked with consultants from Domaine Cordier in Bordeaux learning French red-winemaking techniques, which he still uses today. In 2005, Tony left Church Road Winery to set up his own business as a consultant winemaker. Tony consults for a number of wine companies throughout New Zealand.
Hill Country Estate, where the fruit for their Syrah is grown is a series of limestone terraces in among residential areas on the slopes of Te Mata Peak. This is the highest elevation at which Syrah is grown in the Hawke’s Bay Region. The vineyard area is approximately 5.3 hectares in size and is divided into 8 sub-blocks, producing the varieties Viognier, Chardonnay, Syrah, Barbera and Montepulciano. The vineyard was already planted in these varieties when we took over management of it in early 2013
To find out more about this wine, its pricing and where to buy it follow this link to the Wine-Searcher website: https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/de+la+terre+rsrv+sra+hawkes+bay+new+zealand/2021
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Hello there today I’m finishing up my look at siras produced in Hawks Bay Region this is the region in the east coast of New Zealand’s North Island the one I’m having a look at today is D Reserve s from the 2021 vintage so this has only just been
Released my reason for looking at these wines is that as a team we’ve been benchmarking Hawks based siras with a view to buying a tons worth of fruit from the bridge par triangle with the idea that we’re going to make some wine this year with the the team here at wine
Searcher now let left this wine to the last of taste because the previous wines we’ve looked at have all been at least predominantly made from fruit from the bridg part triangle and this comes from a slightly different Source this is from fruit from the Hill Country estate which
Is a series of Vineyards on Chalk Terraces slightly further in land they claim to be the highest elevation at which s is grown in the Hawk’s Bay at at 160 m above sea level and the wine maker here is somebody called Tony Pritchard now Tony’s an incredibly experienced
Hawks Bay wine maker he began his wine making career having graduated with a a food technology degree from Massie University back in the early 80s and quickly Rose to to become the senior wine maker for Montana but at there gizon and haw Bay facilities at that stage Montana had just bought Church
Road in Hawks Bay and eventually Tony became the chief wine maker for Church Road and that was a position that he stayed in until 2005 when he decided to leave and devote his attentions to wine consultancy so helping other people make their wines as well as Consulting Tony
Began slowly to set up deer he produced his first V vintage here in 2019 he largely built the winery himself I mean one of the reasons that the winery is called d is that the actually actual Winery buildings and their home are built out of rammed Earth and this was something
Tony did a lot of himself and perhaps the deler concept is not only embodied in that but also in the fact that they’re quite hands off quite minimal invent interventionist in terms of the wine making here now I should say Tony is assisted at the winery by his wife
Kay the two of them met while they were both studying food technology at Massi University they took over management of the two sets of Vineyards that they use in 2013 these were already planted Vineyards as I say the Hill Country Estate Vineyards are a series of chalk
Terraces and they’re on the edge of What’s called the tamata special character Zone and the chalky soil gives a slightly different aspect to the sort of style that you would see from the Frable gravels in in somewhere like bridg P or the gimlet gravels chalk acts much more like a
Sponge and slowly lets out water to the vine so the chalk will act as a reservoir of water but will help to deig The Vine by not releasing that water particularly quickly or readily to it so you tend to get quite elegant wines coming off chalk soil now there is only
One block of Sira within the vineyard however there are sufficient differences in the different areas within that block that they’re able to make two wines out of it so as well as the reserve there’s also an ordinary bottling of sirup the fruit’s all handpicked it’s dist stemmed
And gently crushed and then from there it’s pumped into open fermenters now as I say Tony believes in being hands off where possible in his wine making so he encourages fermentations to start with the indigenous yeasts that have come into the winery on the fruit however he
Doesn’t always trust to that because he notes that these yeasts can often stick later in the ferment ation so he’s always sure to have a vigorous rescue culture of yeast on hand to ensure that he can always make his fermentations complete to dry there are some notes on
Their website that suggest that they do use micro oxidation for some of their Reds now I don’t know if they do that for the Sira or not certainly they grow tanat which you would think probably is is where that’s most likely to be applied but there’s a possibility that
That a small proportion of this under goes micro oxidation where uh fine stream of oxygen is bubbled through the wine as it matures just to help the tannins to polymerize and to smooth and they almost Melt Away there is another source of oxidation however that’s Barrel aging and this wine is aged for
15 months in barrels with 50% of that being new the majority of the barrels I believe a French Oak and they’re 225 L bars holding about 300 bottles of wine each however more recently Tony has also been using Hungarian Oak barrels and largely Hungarian Oak tends to be the
Same species of Oak and has a lot of similarities with French Oak but there’s something in the character that Tony quite quite likes and after 15 months aging the wines are bottled they’re unfined and they’re unfiltered and their belief is that this ensures the concentration and the Integrity of the
Wines so let’s have a look at the wine and see what we make of it shall we as an initial impression that is a a deep dark ruby red with a a hint of purple at The Rim it’s more or less opaque can’t see the stem of the glass certainly through
The wine swelling it it is showing some quite prominent tears eventually they’re showing anyway the wine um according to its label has 14% alcohol which makes it a little higher than some of the other Hawks Bay syas we’ve looked at let’s see what we make of the Aras shall we
The Aromas are very mellow the elements within the wine are all very very well married there’s a lovely ripe juicy dark red fruit the notes are of dark Plum red to Black Plum with dark cherry there are slight Savory hints there as well you you might talk about black olive or or
Leather there are hints of spice it’s more sort of drying black pepper than sweet spices although there is a hint of Cedar and perhaps a touch of chocolatin on the Aromas so let’s taste it and see what we make of it shall we the wine has sort of a fairly meaty
Note at the outset that gives way to the more red fruit notes again there’s red plum there’s a rich Cherry but the structur is in there and there is there are grainy tannins there are cedur notes and in there there are notes of chocolate cocoa touches of coffee
There’s plenty going on there there’s a nice medium to full body there there good warmth coming from the alcohol just a rounded nature there and it’s giving that sort of really ripe Plum Plum to prune sort of note there is a sort of a leather to to the plummy pruny notes
There and but there’s also a bit of a lifted red cherry on the on the mid pallet there as well the lifted nature of that fruit suggests to me there’s some reasonable acidity there although I think the alcohol is perhaps adding warmth and and power to the
Finish that the acidity is not quite it’s sufficient to lift the the Finish over there’s some gripping Tan in there there’s hints of pencil shavings a little bit of graphite there’s a good concentration it’s not quite so licoricey concentrated but there’s a nice richness there and a
Smooth texture to the tannins and then right at the Finish there really is a sort of a note of white pepper so there’s a lot of really classic Sira style to this wine that I really quite enjoy it’s still a very young wine it still has to settle so perhaps it’s
Unfair to be judging 2021 at this stage I do wonder whether a little more acidity and perhaps slightly lower alcohol would have left a slightly more balanced wine however given its alcohol given its tannins and given the concentration of the fruit I think this
Probably is a wine to age for 3 or 4 years quite happily and I’d be quite interested to see if coming back to it it had become a little more balanced because I do enjoy the intensity of the fruit and the harmony between the elements going going into the wine so
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