Fruit from twelve vineyards where selected for this wine. The sites were concentrated around the southern side of Marlborough’s Wairau Valley and included Brookby, Omaka, Waihopai and Brancott sub regions

The majority of vineyards were hand harvested and sorted to ensure the highest quality fruit entered the winery. From the sorting table the fruit passed through a vibrating destemmer set to retain the maximum amount of whole berries. A further whole bunch component was used in some batches ranging from ve to 50% with two at 80%. A ‘selective’ harvester was used for the machine harvested vineyards to provide the cleanest sample to the winery. All batches had a cold soak period ranging between 5 and 10 days.

After cold soak the tanks were warmed and a wild fermentation encouraged. During fermentation the caps where submerged by plunging twice during a 24 hour period. Temperatures peaked at 30 to 33°C over the 10 -12 day ferment period, following this, a 3 – 8 day post ferment maceration allowing the tannins to soften.

The wine was left to age on oak for 10 months including a small portion of new French barriques (8%). During this time the wine underwent Malolactic fermentation. No nings were required prior to ltration and bottling in March 2014.