Region: Hawke’s Bay

Wine Making: Harvested in two passes over a ten day period during late March 2002, the fruit was destemmed and crushed to open top fermenters and hand plunged during fermentation. After primary fermentation was completed the wine was pressed to barrel and underwent mololactic fermentation in barrel in new Burgundian style (Sirugue) oak . The wine was regularly racked and very gently aerated during ageing. The winemaking philosophy is to preserve the very distinct vineyard character and fruit purity along with support from low impact French oak. The wine was bottled on September 2003, unfined and unfiltered, and released in November 2004 after 14 months bottle age.

Uniqueness: The wine has possessed an “x” factor since fermentation including a unique and incredible spicy/licorice texture. This can only be attributed to the site and particular special growing conditions.

Note from the wine maker: 2008 is the sixth vintage of la collina Syrah and as time moves forward we can see the evolution of the earlier vintages in bottle. We feel that this wine will continue to evolve in the bottle for the next 10 years.

Accolades:

Bob Campbell MW Gourmet Traveller Wine June 2010 

Rating:  98 ****      Top New Zealand Syrah from 12 judged

 "Produced from grapes grown on a tiny hillside vineyard in Gimblett Gravels. It shows dense, sweet, ripe fruit, with strong raspberry, currants, plum, violets, vanilla, black pepper and spicy oak characters. It's a powerful wine with linear and lengthy flavours. Supremely elegant and surprisingly accessible, although there is an undercurrent of flavour that will need time to reveal itself. The wine has a great texture - fine-grained with silken sweetness. It has edged to the front of a very strong field thanks to its elegance, power, complexity and potential."

Nick Stock, SMH/Age  Wine Guide 2011 Rating:  98 ****      The ‘08 la collina is a complex young Syrah, with layers and layers of fine spice and pepper, fragrant sweet purple florals and a core of plum, graphite and blackberry. The palate’s bright and fresh, with lively acidity and fine even-grained tannins that run the length and long through the finish. Plum flavour remains, spice and pepper too. It has all the hallmarks of a great wine in the making.

Tyson Stelzer - April 2011: 97 points “It is preposterous that New Zealand’s finest red may not be a pinot; inconceivable that it could eclipse every Euro, Aussie and everywhere-else red so far this year. Such are the contradictions of La Collina. Hawke’s Bay syrah with pepper, graphite, coal, flint, iron filings and the textural structure of dreams.”

TASTE FOOD & WINE 2008 - Matthew Jukes and Tyson Stelzer: "La collina is the greatest Syrah to ever come out of New Zealand, and it single-handedly positions this country, for the first time among the great Shiraz producers of the world.”

Note from the distributor: An extremely RARE collectable  wine