Tasting Notes:

A dark plum core with a bright purple rim presents a vibrant and outstanding floral nose with beautiful ripe red fruit, luscious cassis, blackberries and plums with clean forest aromas, along with an allusion of pepper, mint, clove and tobacco.  The palate has rich smooth tannins, an elegant and silky finish with beautiful forest fruit and dark chocolate.  A Bordeaux style wine with a very unique Okanagan interpretation.  Drink 2010 through 2018, with longer aging possible with proper cellaring.  

Bottling Date

August 2009 

Vineyard

Burrowing Owl Vineyards 

Alc/Vol:

14.5%

Sweetness Code 

0

Winemaking: 

The grapes for this wine were harvested in October, 2007 from the Burrowing Owl Estate vineyards. The fruit for each varietal that composes this blend was destemmed and crushed into closed top stainless steel tanks and inoculated with our preferred yeast strains.  The varietals were fermented separately for approximately 14 days on skins before the wine was pressed off and transferred into barrels for malolactic fermentation (MLF).  The wine was aged in a mixture of French, American, and Russian oak (25% new oak) barrels where it was aged with occasional racking until August 2008.  The wine was assembled from the best individual parcels of Bordeaux varietals from the Burrowing Owl Estate vineyards . The wines from each component wine were assessed for quality and suitability.  Only the best wines made it into the final blend. The final blend received a total of 22 months of barrel age.

Blend Composition:

36% - Cabernet Franc
35% - Merlot
23% - Cabernet Sauvignon
5% - Malbec
1% Petit Verdot

Oak Program:

40% New French Oak – Various Cooperages
5% New Hungarian Oak - Various Cooperages
5% New Russian Oak - Various Cooperages
50% Second Fill French Oak – Various Cooperages

Analysis:

pH: 3.82  TA 7.6g/L

Closure

It is sealed with a new, state of the art closure: the Procork membrane barrier cork, which consists of a natural cork with the ends protected by a sophisticated, multilayer membrane. The purpose of the membrane is to dramatically reduce the incidence of TCA (aka ‘cork taint’) in the wine and to add longevity.