Woodlands Cabernet Sauvignon 'Matthew' 2014

The Vintage

2014 was a warm consistent year producing wines of balance.
Unfortunately high winds early in Spring reduced some varieties, but our Cabernet Sauvignon survived unscathed. Warm dry conditions until February perfectly ripened the Cabernet Franc and Malbec, but from March onwards the conditions cooled somewhat, extending out the Cabernet Sauvignon harvest and enabling more flavour development.

The Site

Our Cabernet Sauvignon is sourced from our original plantings of Cabernet Sauvignon, Malbec and Cabernet Franc found on our south-facing slope. The soil profile of this slope is generally sandy loam over gravel and clay. The top of the slope, where the Cabernet Franc is planted, has significantly more gravel in its soil. These four small plots receive the greatest number of sunlight hours on our vineyard, but the east-west orientation of the vines ensures a slow fruit maturation. These are the last batches we harvest each year.

The Cellar

This wine was harvested between the 25th of March and the 9th of
April, yielding 6.21 tonnes per hectare. After being picked, the fruit
was destemmed before passing over our vibrating sorting table.
Once sorted and crushed, this wine was fermented in small closed
fermenters. Following fermentation, the Cabernet Sauvignon must
remained on skins before being pressed for the secondary malolactic
fermentation to occur. Afterwards, the wine was transferred into new
French medium toast barrels to mature for 19 months.

The Wine

This wine is a blend of 94% Cabernet Sauvignon, 4% Malbec
and 2% Cabernet Franc.

The colour is intense deep crimson. The nose is expressive and powerful, showing primary Caberent characters of blackcurrant, mulberry and dark cherry combined with tight grained French oak.
On opening the palate is dense, but shows great balance and finesse. There is a lovely softness and suppleness to the palate that overlays a powerful core of old vine Cabernet fruit. Hints of vanilla, mint and bay leaf emerge and combine with the primary fruit flavours as the wine opens up over the first hour. Given enough air and time, the tannins soften and the wine opens up to reveal more nuance, but still at this stage maintaining it’s youthful power.

All 2014’s from Woodlands show the generosity of the vintage, and our Cabernet Sauvignon shows it most of all.

This wine takes you straight to the Woodlands cellar, where you can smell the barrels being racked and washed, and the must being pressed – this wine still maintains the primacy it had straight off the press.