Esk Valley River Gravel Merlot / Malbec / Cabernet Sauvignon, Hawkes Bay

Description

Esk Valley River Gravel Merlot / Malbec / Cabernet Sauvignon is part of Esk Valley’s “Great Dirt” collection of wines. This wine is made from a blend of fruit from old vines planted in deep heat reflective gravel within the Gimblett Gravels Winegrowing District. The great Dirt Collection also includes the Seabed Chardonnay, Hillside Syrah and Hillside Malbec / Merlot / Cabernet France.

Esk Valley Estate started trading under the Esk Valley name in 1987, having been an established wine company since the 1930’s. It is located in the heart of Hawke’s Bay. Esk Valley is considered a boutique winery and is unique in that many of the techniques used to craft its award-winning wines are dictated by the winery itself. They still use their old concrete vats and the layout of the buildings and the absence of modern technology mean the winemakers at Esk Valley have had to make wine in a simple, honest, hands-on way.

Esk Valley sources fruit from vineyard in Hawke’s Bay, including the very highly regarded Gimblett Gravels wine-growing region. Their most famous red wine is the flagship Esk Valley The Terraces which is made from grapes grown on terraced banks above the winery. However the Esk Valley Winemakers Reserve blend is extremely highly regarded as one of New Zealand’s red wine blends too. The Winemakers Reserve wines are made from grapes selected from the winery’s best and low yielding vineyards in the Gimblett Gravels.

The grapes for the Esk Valley River Gravel Merlot / Malbec / Cabernet Sauvignon come from three tiny vineyard plots of Greywacke River gravel, silt and sand strewn soils deposited in the wake of the 1867 Ngaruroro River flood. These old vines which are planted in deep gravels in the Cornerstone and Ngakirikiri vineyards date back to the 1990’s and early 2000s. They vines are pruned to short canes and cropped at one bunch per shoot in the pursuit of quality. Individual vineyard parcels were hand harvested and destemmed to individual concrete fermenters for fermentation with wild yeast. A period of post fermentation maceration was employed to lengthen tannins and provide structure before the ferments were pressed and the wine run to French oak barrels for ageing, 19 months in 225 litre french oak barriques 45% new.

The 2019 is a blend of Merlot 39%, Malbec and 31% Cabernet Sauvignon 30%.