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2008 Alluviale
Wine of the Week, 5 stars - New Zealand Listener May 8-14 2010
"This Hawke's Bay red is dark and finely fragrant, with deep blackcurrant, plum and spice flavours, deliciously rich and rounded. A five-star wine at a four-star price." |
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2008 Alluviale Anobli
Trophy for Sweet wine at the 2009 Liquorland Top 100 |
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2007 Alluviale
Gold medal at 2009 Royal Easter Show Wine Awards
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2008 Alluviale Blanc
Sauvignon Blanc 18 1/2 Reviewed by Geoff Kelly 04/09
Lemongreen. Bouquet here is in one sense more complex than the Astrolabe Awatere, in that oak is involved, but in another way it is not so perfectly varietal. Ripe fruit, barrel-ferment, lees-autolysis, and some SO2 are still to marry up, but the direction is clearly towards a complex Graves style. Palate is black passionfruit more than red capsicums, showing good body, great length with the barrel-ferment / new oak component noticeable, again a little SO2 to resolve. This will be exciting wine in a year’s time, and make a fine comparison with wines such as Te Mata’s Cape Crest and Sacred Hill’s Sauvage in Hawkes Bay, as well as the intensely varietal sauvignons such as Section 94 and Te Koko from Marlborough. Alluviale Blanc seems softer than some of these wines, which could help it with food. It is a more substantial wine than the stainless steel Astrolabes, but does not achieve their exquisite varietal definition. Personal preference here, but either way, Alluviale Blanc is a great addition to the ranks of modern sophisticated New Zealand sauvignons. Cellar 2 – 10 years.
Reproduced with kind permission of Geoff Kelly, www.geoffkellywinereviews.co.nz |
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2008 Alluviale Anobli
Sauvignon Blanc 93 points Reviewed by Bob Campbell 02/09
Very sweet wine with beautifully pure botrytis flavours of honey, marmalade and toffee. It's difficult to recognise any varietal character but the wine is very precise and perfectly balanced. |
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2008 Alluviale Blanc
Sauvignon Blanc 4 stars Reviewed by Bob Campbell
Soft, fleshy and quite flavoursome Sauvignon Blanc with pure nectarine and peach flavours that linger impressively on the finish. Gentle wine with a pleasantly dry finish. Hawke's Bay Sauvignon Blanc doesn't get a lot better than this. |
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2006 Alluviale
Merlot / Cabernet Sauvignon 18 Reviewed by Geoff Kelly 12/08
Ruby and velvet, some carmine. This is a fresher and more obviously new world Bordeaux blend than the Church Road and Mills Reef examples in this batch. In the blind tasting cassis is to the fore, notwithstanding the cepage, so the wine is confuseable with subtle syrah in its attractive florality. Palate is cassis and bottled dark plums, showing good richness, weight and flavour for its price-point. It therefore continues the trend set up under its previous Blake Family Vineyard ownership, and is one to seek out. The new owners include winemaker David Ramonteau-Chiros, a graduate of the University of Bordeaux, so the winestyles of that district are uppermost in his mind. The aromatics on this wine yet again remind us how exceptional merlot can be in New Zealand, and with a cepage as above, how closely wines like this can approach St Emilion or maybe Pomerol winestyles. Present evidence is more for the former. Cellar 5 – 15 years.
Reproduced with kind permission of Geoff Kelly, www.geoffkellywinereviews.co.nz
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2005 Alluviale
Reviewed by Geoff Kelly, November 2006 in a blind tasting of 21 French, US and NZ wines
2005 (Blake Family Vineyard) Alluviale 18 ½ +
Gimblett Gravels, Hawkes Bay, New Zealand: 13.5%; $27 [ cork; DFB; Me 43%, CS 43, CF 14; French oak; second wine of Blake Family Vineyard; www.alluviale.com ]
Ruby, carmine and velvet, about halfway in depth, a great colour. Initially opened, the oak shows a little, but decanted, the bouquet emphasises merlot, superb violets, dark roses florals and dark cassis, magnificent. Below is dark plums-in-the-sun fruit. Palate is gorgeous, perfect physiological maturity of the fruit, great depth of cassis and bottled dark plums berry, subtle oak. This is a beautifully pure, precisely varietal, remarkable merlot / cabernet, of similar quality to the 2004 Craggy Range Merlot Gimblett Gravels I was praising extravagantly only six months ago. Little did I think a challenger to that wine (in that price bracket) would be along so soon. If this is an harbinger of what The Blake Family Vineyard management plans to achieve in New Zealand, there will be a need to get on the mailing list early.
Cellar 5 - 15 years.
To read a comprehensive article covering the entire tasting of 21 wines, including earlier Alluviale releases, please click here. Reproduced with kind permission of Geoff Kelly, www.geoffkellywinereviews.co.nz
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