The 2021 Middle-Earth Nelson Viognier is pale straw in colour and medium to full-bodied this Viognier has typical aromas of apricot and orange blossom, with just a hint of clean white smoke. The wine is both flavoursome and textural, the essence of fruit building and lingering on the palate.
Brand
Middle-Earth
Variety
Viognier
Region
Nelson
Country
New Zealand
Size
750 ml
Alcohol
13.0 %
Food Pairing
Try with a Moroccan dish of lamb shanks and dried apricots or as an aperitif with walnut crackers, a ripe blue cheese and quince paste.
Dry → Sweet
10%
WINEMAKING: Machine harvested on the 27th of March and processed to the press without further crushing. Free-run and pressing juices were cold settled separately, however once clarified the pressings were such nectar that they were recombined with the mother juice. Twenty percent of the recombined juice was peeled off to a well -seasoned barrel for ferment and the remainder racked to tank. Both the barrel and tank were inoculated with a yeast strain from Viognier’s ancestral home - the Rhône. It was chosen for its capacity to produce fruit forward wines with suppleness and volume on the palate. Stylistically we have not previously had an oaked portion on our Viognier, but the acidity was such this vintage that a portion aged on gross yeast lees and allowed to complete malolactic fermentation was a real attribute to the final blend. The tank ferment was arrested with some surplus residual sugar thanking into account the dry barrel portion we would be adding back at blending. It was then promptly racked of gross yeast lees and allowed to rest on fine lees before blending of the two components in November and bottling early December. TASTING NOTE: Pale Straw in colour and medium to full-bodied this Viognier has typical aromas of apricot and orange blossom, with just a hint of clean white smoke. The wine is both flavoursome and textural, the essence of fruit building and lingering on the palate. This fleshy wine is afforded an elegance thanks to bright acidity and a phenolic skeleton together balancing the residual sugar and creating a lingering finish.
