Members Only – Tapanappa Wrattonbully Cabernet Shiraz 2007

The Whalebone Cabernet and the Hooper Shiraz were completely ripe at harvest with sugars at 24 to 26 Brix and natural acids at 5gpl. The pH’s of the juices were moderate at 3.6.

The very ripe fruit was hand harvested and transported to the Petaluma winery in the Piccadilly Valley where it was de-stemmed, crushed and chilled to 1 tonne open fermentation tubs. A four-day cold maceration preceded the onset of fermentation, which took 8 days with daily hand plunging and reached a maximum temperature of 35ºC.

The fermentation tubs were sealed down for a post-fermentation maceration of a further 9 days. The fermentation tubs were gently pressed in a small air-bag press and the turbid wine was immediately gravitated to French oak barriques (70% new) to undergo malo-lactic fermentation.

After malo-lactic fermentation the wine was racked off gross lees and a minimal dose of SO2 was added. A further two rackings over the twenty months in French oak barriques clarified the wines which were blended, given a light egg white fining and put into bottle without filtration on the 12th of March 2009.