The Vineyard
Zinfandel is known as an iconic wine at Cape Mentelle but an unusual grape varietal for Margaret River. This brings challenges each year for our viticultural team as the large bunches are notoriously thin skinned, creating the risk for disease incidence during cooler vintages. This small block of zinfandel is located on our Estate vineyard, just 4kms from the Indian Ocean. Bush vines demand significant attention to detail with all tasks, such as canopy management, fruit thinning and shoot positioning, all carried out by hand. The aim is to produce grapes with a dense concentration of flavour and powerful expression of place. The 2020 vintage was considered close to perfect, a long warm summer with great ripening conditions and an extended mild end to the season, allowing for plenty of time to harvest. March brought an unexpected rain event, but this provided a refresh for our reds before picking.
Winemaking
Zinfandel was handpicked in early March to capture confectionary flavours from shrivelled berries and bright red fruit flavours from whole berries, along with ripe tannin. The fruit was then fermented in a combination of wooden vats and closed top fermenters with selected yeast. With careful monitoring batches were basket pressed after 27 days on skins and pressings kept separate. Integrating only the best pressings back to retain the powerful structure of zinfandel, it was matured in barrel for 18 months using 50% new French, American and Hungarian oak building complexity. Requiring no fining the final blend was filtered prior to being Estate bottled.
Analysis
14.1% alcohol 6.24 g/l total acidity 3.56 pH Suitable for vegans
Ray Jordan Wine
There aren’t a lot of zins made in WA, or anywhere for that matter, but this is certainly one of the most famous. It appears to have been picked a little earlier to retain some of the perfumed aromatics. It’s a remarkably elegant wine, which is something you don’t often say about this variety and for me this is one of the best. If this is a new direction, I like the direction.
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