The Flying Winemaker Syrah 2019

Dark red, purple hue. The nose is rich and lifted, with notes of violets, gamey meats and eucalypts. The palate is generous with cherry cola and toasty oak. The tannins are firm with hints of cool climate spice on the finish.

Winemaking without borders while ultimately aiming to express the honest flavours of individual grape varietals. Each wine produced under this range is a benchmark example of grape, place, and maker.

With an ambitious and pioneering spirit, we thrive on discovering and expressing the finest terroir — getting the best from every grape with minimal intervention. The results are exceptional wines, crafted with passion and precision so you too can experience the journey, one sip at a time!

The property consists of ~24ha (around 60 acres) spread over two terraces laid down by the Ngaruroro River. We are initially planting 10ha of vineyard on one of the terraces, and have a further 10-12ha which we will develop later. The property also has around 2ha of sloping banks, a portion of which we plan to plant with staked Syrah, in a manner similar to the way it is grown in the northern Rhone Valley in France. The lower nightime temperatures of the inland site should support production of wines in a cooler climate style with good aromatics and elegant structure, avoiding the risk of overripe charactoristics. Over the past 15,000 years, the nearby Ngaruroro River has laid down some spectacular terraces, with shallow stony silt loams over red metals. As well as being shaped by the river, the soils also contain volcanic deposits from past eruptions on the volcanic plateau in the central North Island. Most of the site infrastructure will go in during 2015 and the first half of 2016, with initial planting taking place when the vines are available in the second half of 2016. Vine orders for the first phase of planting were placed during 2015.

Choosing the Syrah clones was probably the hardest call, given the diversity of opinion out there! We opted to go for a “Mass Selection” (MS) with it’s origins in the Stonecroft vineyard. Stonecroft was one of the original vineyards in the Gimblett Gravels and it’s founder, Dr. Alan Limmer, rescued some of the original Syrah vines from a collection at the Te Kauwhata research station before they were ripped out. Thought to have been originally sent out from France in the 1830’s, MS now forms the base for much of the success Hawke’s Bay is having with Syrah. We also added some Syrah 470 - a more recent clone known for it’s intense black pepper and plum flavours.

The fruit for this Syrah is sourced from Two Terraces vineyard in Hawkes Bay. Machine harvested at night and then transported to the Wairarapa, where the fruit is left to cool overnight before being destemmed the next day into 2-tonne open fermentation vats. Fermentation will last 3.5 weeks, with a morning pump-over done once a day and plunging done by hand once a day to ensure a soft extraction of tannins, colour and flavour. We then press o the wine and remove it from its skins to be matured in a a mix of French oak barrels (15% new) that have a tight grain and high toast for 14 months, each with its own balanced oak regime of barrel age and choice of coopers.