PL Award 1: SILVER - DWWA 2016
PL Award 2: SILVER - SWA 2016
Country: New Zealand Region: Marlborough Vintage: 2023
Varietal: Chardonnay Category: White Wine Style: Dry
Producer: Blank Canvas
"Matt Thomson is a busy winemaker. He has worked over forty vintages in numerous wine regions around the world, and has worked with David Gleave since 1994. He is involved with many of the wines in our portfolio, primarily as a consultant. ""Now is the time to launch my own wines,"" he says. ""Blank Canvas represents my story as a winemaker. It is an endeavour that is entirely my own expression of winemaking, is from my own funding, and is exclusively my risk."" The 'Blank Canvas' is the vineyard and the variety, the winery the brush and palette (no pun intended) at the winemaker's disposal, all the while defined by the scientific grounding Matt laid at university and has built upon over the past 23 years. His aim is to break some rules with the Blank Canvas wines, but in order to break the rules, he feels, you need to know them. This is what sets the Blank Canvas wines apart.The fruit for the Grüner Veltliner comes from a single vineyard in the Rapaura sub-region. Free run juice was fermented primarily in stainless steel, with 25% of the blend going to half new and half one year old French oak puncheons (600 litre, to ensure less oak uptake), where the wine remained for eight months. The oak gives depth and texture to the wine, while the single vineyard and the careful handling gives the wine a lovely aromatic intensity. Matt is a firm believer in Marlborough's ability to produce some of New Zealand's best Pinot Noir. This wine is also from a single vineyard, planted by Matt in 2001 on the low vigour clay soils of the Waihopai valley. The wine was fermented with wild yeasts and 50% whole bunch was used. It has lovely restraint and a stunning varietal purity, all held together on the palate by firm yet fine tannins. The fruit for the Syrah comes from a single vineyard on th
Country: Spain Region: Rioja
Varietal: 85% Tempranillo, 15% Graciano
Category: Red Wine Style: Dry
Producer: Artuke
*Limited to one per person*
Escolladero" comes from the word escollo: difficulty, obstacle. They have given this name to the wine because the vineyard is located near one of the most difficult areas of passage where the Sierra de Cantabria used to be crossed on foot. Arturo De Miguel Blanco, vigneron together with his brother Kike from the Artuke Winery, tells us that it is an emblematic plot in Abalos, with less than one hectare of surface and light-colored calcareous clay soil, as is typical in this area of Baños del Ebro, in Álava. What is unusual is that in 1950 this mixture of two varieties was planted in the same soil, Tempranillo and Graciano, the same grapes with which the De Miguel brothers make Escolladero, aged between 12 and 16 months in French oak. which is all elegance, structure and roundness.
Tasting Notes: Fine, floral and complex, it has the freshness and precision of a wine from 650 metres, with notes of laurel and violet, granular tannins and tangy black cherry and raspberry fruit.
This is a stunning wine, made with the utmost love and care and is made in tiny quantities.
It is truly a wine that you will remember if you are lucky enough to ever taste it.