Smidge Wines

Tasting Notes

Slightly lighter in colour than its Barossa bred brother, the Donald, with subtle red fruits, florals, spice and creamy notes. The characters flow to the palate with the added complexity of fruitcake and underlying fine tannins.

Viticulture

Grown on sandy loams over limestone adjacent to a flood plain of the Bremer River in Langhorne creek, the vines are allowed to sprawl, but require careful irrigation management. Like many South Australian regions in 2005, Langhorne Creek experienced near ideal growing and ripening conditions with mild days and cool nights. The lack of weather extremes allowed flavour to develop evenly with sugar accumulation to attain near perfect ripeness.

Vinification & Maturation

Although the season was very good for ripening it is interesting that the Langhorne Creek Zinfandel was picked nearly a month later than the Zin from the Barossa. The fruit was hand picked, and similar to last year there was 10-20% berry dimpling (ie slight shrivelling) and was also disease free. The fruit was then de-stemmed only and inoculated with a commercial yeast strain. The must was chilled and cold macerated for 2 days and then warmed up to allow fermentation to proceed. Fermentation was even and lasted roughly 7 days with a maximum temperature of 280C. Total time on skins was 14 days. When the fermenter was pressed, the free run and pressings were blended to tank. After 24 hours, the wine was racked to 2-4 year old French barriques for 11 months, during which malolactic fermentation occurred and the wines were racked twice. Prior to bottling the barrels of both batches were blended and fined, but not filtered.

Technical Analysis

Harvested - April 2005
Bottlied - September 2006
Alcohol - 15.5%