Esk Valley The Terraces 2000

Description

Esk Valley The Terraces 2000 is a testament to Hawke’s Bay’s potential for producing world-class Bordeaux-style blends. It is the estate’s flagship blend. The 2000 is a classic vintage of the ”The Terraces”.

Esk Valley Estate started trading under the Esk Valley name in 1987, having been an established wine company since the 1930’s, when Sir George Fistonich (who also founded Villa Maria back in 1961) purchased the historic Glenvale Winery from the Bird Family in 1986. The estate is located in the heart of the Hawke’s Bay wine-growing region. The estate has been owned by Indevin since 2021.

Esk Valley’s winemakers continue to apply the same techniques used in the original Bay View winery established in 1933. This includes fermentation with wild vineyard yeasts, long-term lees ageing, hand plunging and stirring. The red wines are fermented in concrete fermenters that are exact replicas of the historic tanks in the original winery. 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. However, in 2018, Esk Valley relocated its winemaking operation to an all new site situated in the Gimblett Gravels winegrowing District of Hawkes Bay. Interestingly, the indigenous yeast from the original winery site was captured and transplanted inland to the new site and added to the waiting ferments, thus intertwining the DNA of old and new.

Esk Valley Wines has also been instrumental in introducing innovative grape varieties to Hawke’s Bay, such as Albarino and Verdelho, expanding the region’s winemaking horizons. While primarily known for their exceptional red wines, especially those from the esteemed Gimblett Gravels, Esk Valley also produces outstanding Sauvignon Blanc, Pinot Noir and Riesling sourced from vineyards in Marlborough.

The grapes for Esk Valley The Terraces 2000 are from a single vineyard, a small terraced vineyard at Esk Valley Estate in Bay View, north of Napier.  This sheltered and frost-free site has a north-easterly aspect, maximising sunshine hours and escaping the cold weather from the south.  Planted in 1989 on terraces originally engineered in the 1940s, the 2460 vines are a mix of Merlot, Malbec and Cabernet Franc.  The first vintage in 1991 set a new standard for New Zealand red wine and subsequent vintages have reinforced the superiority of this site.

The fruit was hand-harvested and crushed in Esk’s 70 year old open-topped concrete fermenters and then fermented with a cultured yeast.  When active the caps are plunged by hand six hourly.  With no temperature control the ferments peak at around 32 – 34 degrees Celsius.  Once dry the Malbec was pressed and run to barrel for malolactic fermentation while the Merlot and Cabernet Franc were macerated and pressed out after 24 days in the fermenter. The wine was blended at six months and aged in new thin staved French oak barriques, and then racked three monthly before being egg-white fined and bottled in December 2001.  370 cases (six bottles per case) were produced.

The 2000 vintage is a blend of Malbec 39%, Merlot 33% and Cabernet Franc 28%.