Tasting Notes:

Fresh green-gold in colour with a floral bouquet of nectarine flower and gentle oak-infused citrus, this wine’s complex, mealy texture has been enhanced through quiet natural fermentation and maturation in fine quality 100% new French oak hogsheads.

The balanced, satisfying mouth-feel remains a typical element of the delicate power of this unique Bloodwood style.

A complete wine now, medium term cellaring will only reward.

About the Schubert Vineyard:

The Bloodwood Schubert vineyard is to the east of the cellar door on a gentle undulating north-east slope of volcanoclastic loam interspersed with mass flow rounded cobbles of crystalline andesitic lava scattered through a quite a friable red clay base.

The vines are of the FVI10V5 clone, planted in rows running north/south and trellised to a Scott-Henry trellis system opened to the protected west.

The vines are mostly spur pruned to around 50,000 buds per hectare and with each vine occupying 4.5 square meters of the vineyard, yields are no more than moderate in most years.

Vineyard Notes:

The Bloodwood Schubert vineyard is to the east of the cellar door on a gentle undulating north-east slope of volcanoclastic loam interspersed with mass flow rounded cobbles of crystalline andesitic lava scattered through a quite a friable red clay base. The vines are of the FVI10V5 clone, planted in rows running north/south and trellised to a Scott-Henry trellis system opened to the protected west. The vines are mostly spur pruned to around 50,000 buds per hectare and with each vine occupying 4.5 square meters of the vineyard, yields are no more than moderate in most years.

Winemaking:

The hand-picked fruit was immediately whole-bunch pressed through air-bags to 1.1 atmospheres with the super low phenolic juice transferred to an insulated tank for overnight settling and subsequent racking.

Some fine settlings were allowed to pass into the racking tank where, under gentle warmth, the juice commenced fermentation.

After a Brix or so was converted by natural yeasts, the freshly moving juice was transferred to a mixture of 100% new Saury 3 year Immersion Bent French oak and ANA Selection Venus ML hogsheads and held in a warming room throughout primary fermentation.

This is critical at Bloodwood as the autumn nights can be quite chilly and the indigenous yeasts seem to need some cosseting. Usually, ferment is conducted around 17 C to natural dryness over 25 days or so.

Immediately all activity ceases, the wine is sulfured, lees-stirred, topped up and relocated to our cool (13C) maturation cellar for aging.

The fine lees are kept in contact with the wine through weekly topping and stirring, and after up to eighteen months, the wine is bench trialled, cold stabilized to -5C for 7 days, protein stability confirmed and sterile filtered into bottle.

Schubert is all about fruit and place and as long term devotees would appreciate, Bloodwood can be quite a fruity place.

Technical Details:

pH 3.22
Acidity 7.2 g/l
Alc/Vol 13.5%