EASTHOPE FAMILY WINEGROWERS
2020 PADDOCK SIX SYRAH
“Moderately deep hued wine with a garnet tint. Taut, seamless wine with cassis, violet, blackberry, cacao powder, wet stone/mineral and integrated spicy oak framed by fine, moderately assertive tannins. Youthful and has a great future. Responds well to aeration. Super-serious Syrah.” Bob Campbell MW
You might be surprised to know that very few winemakers own their vineyard, let alone tend the vines. Good wines can be made where these quality determining actions are delegated to third party growers and labour, but profound individual wines only emerge when vested hands tend the vines on a great site.
Outside of picking, Emma and I are the only hands that touch our 3000 Syrah vines within the Paddock Six vineyard here in Mangatahi, Hawke’s Bay. We visit each vine up to 20 times a season. This intimacy with our vineyard means that differences between individual vines are noted. It’s an innate intuition that these particular vines produce grapes that just look, feel, and most importantly, taste right. You could call it our in-house Grand Cru classification.
The 2020 Paddock Six Syrah is the first vintage to attain this status. In 2020 our craft, the site and the weather aligned perfectly.
The written word is an imperfect proxy for experiencing the real thing – but let’s see if we can convey our sensory experience of the wine.
An opaque core colour is ringed with luminous, youthful crimson hues. Swirling in large stemware reveals the true dark garnet core colour. Floral and spice attributes lead the nose with lavender and star anise being the best way to characterise these aromas. Underneath these high notes, fruit aromas that jostle between blueberry and cassis form the tenor and base and continue to emerge with aeration in the glass. The palate is tightly woven with layered fine grain fruit tannin that gives a chalky and graphitic like impression. There is a mineral note there too – like oyster shell. Ripe fruit flavours envelop the tannin resulting in an impressively long, deep, complex finish.
It can be enjoyed now. Aeration in a large glass or half an hour in a decanter will allow the aromas to fully emerge. The youthful tannins can be attenuated when the wine is accompanied with your favourite protein.
For those who possess patience, this wine has decades in front of it. We predict that more complex secondary and tertiary bottle age characters will only become noticeable in seven to ten years.
For those who want more detail, download the PDF here.
Only 650 bottles made. Each bottle is numbered and packaged in a printed wooden box. A tamper sticker printed with the corresponding bottle number, seals the box.
PRICE $175 A BOTTLE