Description

Tasting Notes

The Madre Collection is named after the Cooper family matriarch. These wines are made from grapes hand-picked from our oldest vines and are crafted to be the purest expression of our terroir.

Lifted aromatics of forest berries, floral and spice notes, with graphite and meaty complexity. Intense yet elegant on the palate with a fine tannin framework and a tightly structured finish.

The original 2007 Syrah planting is the source of fruit for our Madre Syrah. Situated on a northeast-facing clay slope, the canopy is carefully managed to create balanced vines that produce powerfully flavoured fruit. Open to the east and the waters of the Bay of Islands, the maritime environment strongly influences both how our vines grow and how the grapes ripen in this unique micro-climate.

Syrah was hand-picked on the 15th and 16th of March 2022. The wine was fermented in small oak open-top vats with an average of 40% whole clusters, then pressed to one-third new French oak barriques. After 13 months of ageing in barrel, the wine was blended and aged for a further 5 months before bottling.

A wetter-than-average early spring set up the vines with excellent canopies and good bunch weights. Summer and early autumn were mostly dry and very warm, although two events of strong winds and rainfall in early February delayed ripening. The fruit showed excellent resilience, hanging through and ripening well in great condition.