Paritua 21·12 2020

Reviews

Sam Kim, Wine Orbit: 97/100. Seductively complex and enticing, the wine shows dark fruit richness, smoked game, vanillin oak, dried herb and potpourri aromas, leading to a powerfully concentrated palate delivering outstanding weight and depth. Wonderfully complemented by plush texture and layers of grainy tannins, finishing impressively long and velvety. At its best: now to 2037.

Cameron Douglas MS: 96/100 & Top Wine Tasted 2023.  A captivating bouquet of dark plums and sweet black olives, there’s a black currant and blackberry scent laced with toasty barrel spices and sweet tobacco oak suggestions. Dry stones and dark earth underpin these bouquet ideas. Full-bodied, taut, dry, complex and firm. Tannins are robust, abundant, polished with fine through course textures, acidity is the backbone and core of fruit centration still making friends with the oak. A wine that is still very youthful and in need of cellar development time. It’s also delicious and a fine match with cheese in its youthful state. Lengthy and complex, a wine best drink for drinking from 2026 through 2036.

Tasting Note

A complex aroma of cassis, black currant, and black cherry, fresh tobacco, cocoa powder hints of oyster shell, floral violet, clove, and an intriguing sanguine and sous bois note. The palate has great structure and layers of complexity of flavour. A silky textured attack with a plush concentrated cassis and blackberry palate, with ripe Black cherry cocoa powder and spice flavours on the mid palate, a hint of mineral elegance expressed as oyster shell with a long flavored fine grained tannin finish.

Aromas and flavours

Additional information

Type: Red wine

Varials: 53% Cabernet Sauvignon, 27% Merlot, 20% Cabernet Franc.

Suggested food match: Enjoy with red meats, hearty roasted game, and rich mushroom dishes like mushroom risotto.

Vineyard: The very best sub blocks on the Paritua Vineyard at 2112 Maraekakaho Road have been selected to grow extremely low yielding vines. Management and care for this flagship wine starts with pruning. The vines are manicured from then onwards, with crop thinning to one bunch per cane and a manual leaf-pluck pre veraison. The canopy is kept open to provide for airflow and sun exposure. At optimum ripeness we hand harvest selected rows.

Winemaking: Whole bunches are de-stemmed and the berries are then sorted using our optical grape sorter, then crushed to a closed fermenter. After a period of cold soak we inoculate with preferred yeast. Temperatures are then managed to reach about 30°C. Once the ferment is dry the wine is tasted to evaluate maceration time, and finally basket pressed to barrel. Barrels are stored in temperature controlled rooms. Paritua aim for about 50% new French oak barriques. Elevage in barrel can take up to 24 months or more. Final barrel selection and blending takes place about 8 weeks before bottling. The wine is bottled after filtration.

Alcohol: 15% vol

Residual sugar:  <1 g/l

Bottle size: 0.75l

Notice: contains sulphites

Cellaring potential: 2036+

Closure: cork

Produced and bottled by: Paritua Vineyards, 2112 Maraekakaho Road, Rd 1, Hastings, New Zealand.

Distributor: vinabonus GmbH, Simmedenweg 40, 34134 Kassel, Germany