Man O’War Island Blend

The Island Blend 2018 is a rich, ripe wine with sweet red berry fruit framed by chocolate and spice. The palate is softly textured with fine ripe tannins making for a decadent expression of a Cabernet Franc dominated blend. Drinking beautifully on release and well pair perfectly with a winter roast.

The Island Blend is a Bordeaux style wine based on Cabernet Franc and Merlot with a small amount of Petit Verdot.

As the name suggests the wine is a blend of fruit from both Waiheke Island and its neighbouring Ponui Island. The Ponui Island Cabernet franc was sourced from the Paradise vineyard, a beautiful yet forbiddingly steep vineyard that requires a picking schedule based around the tide. The remaining fruit is sourced from vineyards on Waiheke; Spot X and the Arlo vineyard for Cabernet Franc and Sharpies Merlot and Machells Petit Verdot complete the blend. After careful hand harvesting the fruit is delivered to the winery and then put across a sorting table before being 100% de-stemmed and delivered to open vats for fermentation. Red ferments undergo fermentation with wild yeasts with pump overs being carried out twice daily. Following an extended time on skins (average 35days in vat) the wines are gently pressed and taken straight to barrel for natural malolactic fermentation in the spring. The wines are racked once to a blend after 18 months before further maturing in tank for 3 months prior to bottling.

750ml   alc. 14.9% vol