Colour:
Stryker 2023 is luminous purple in colour.
Aroma:
It is very bright and lifted aromatically with both sweet and savoury elements. Perfumed with notes of blueberry, Darjeeling tea, heritage rose, licorice, cherry, cassis, pepper medley, and a herbal briar edge.
Palate:
The fresh medium-bodied palate displays crunchy red and blue fruits laced with fine minerally tannins, almost rusty steel in nature, giving a tight structure. There is a mid-palate dark fruit undercurrent adding generosity and depth. Chalky tannins re-emerge at the end carrying the wine to a generous long smooth finish.
Recommended Drinking:
This is a varietal and balanced Petit Verdot that can be enjoyed now or over the next decade.
Vintage 2023 has produced exceptional wines. It was the longest and latest on record, stretching from mid-March to early-May. The vines got off to a superb start with a wet and cool Spring providing plenty of sub-soil moisture for the growing season ahead. Summer brought typically average temperatures and was generally dry with occasional finite rain. The vines were in fantastic condition for slow and steady ripening into Autumn with its mild days, cool nights, and isolated light rain. Yields from 2023 are good and quality is excellent.
Stryker is from a single vineyard of Petit Verdot on the Kalleske property at Moppa. The hand-pruned vines are low yielding and soil is shallow sand with clay subsoil.
The grapes were harvested on May 4th. They were then destemmed to an open top fermenter. Hand pump-overs were made morning and night to circulate the fermenting juice through the skins extracting flavour, colour and phenolics. The must was wild yeast fermented and was on skins for 10 days with a cool ferment of 14-24 degrees Celsius. At dryness the must was drained and pressed and following settling was filled to seasoned French oak hogsheads. It underwent natural malolactic fermentation in barrel and was matured for a year prior to bottling.