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Organic. The 20-year-old Settlement Vineyard is located on the slopes of the Omaka Valley to the south of Marlborough’s Wairau Plains. This organic-certified site is owned by Dog Point and is managed by gun viticulturist Nigel Sowman. The fruit for this bottling hails from a tiny sliver of vines at the top of the vineyard’s east slope, a clay-rich parcel planted at 4,000 vines per hectare (all 777 clone). Typically, the Settlement fruit is among the first to be picked and tends to sit in the red-fruited, youthfully radiant end of the Corofin single-vineyard spectrum. That said, Mike Paterson tells us he’s witnessed a significant evolution in the phenolic structure of the fruit in recent years, and as much plays out in the glass in 2022.
The fruit was picked by hand on 19th March and destemmed to a pair of one-tonne open fermenters. The bottom 15% of the fruit was crushed by foot, with the remaining berries kept intact. Extraction was gentle and occurred once a day. After 19 days, the wine was pressed to seasoned oak for 14 months’ maturation, followed by eight months in tank before being bottled unfined and unfiltered.