Nose
Round, enticing red laced with sweet, succulent dark cherries, plums, flowers and spices.
Palate
The 2009 wines, are quite powerful. There are some very substantial tannins on these wines, they are muscular! It shows remarkable intensity and fabulous balance.
Growing Conditions
The Bone Rock blend comes from the Bone Rock block of James Berry Vineyard. It is a steep terrace of old head trained Syrah vines on a south facing slope. We unearthed fossilized whale bones when we terraced it and then needed to use jack hammers to plant the vines.
2009 was a long, cold growing season with a lot of rain. Smith credits dry-farming for keeping
his vines robust and able to withstand the elements.
Harvest
All of the Grenache and Syrah was in before the big storm on October 13, while the Mourvedre was picked a few weeks later.
Bottling
May 2011
Winemaking
The Syrah component was vinified with 100% stems and saw a maceration lasting 50 days.
Winemaking is stripped down to the core. Two sorting tables
ensure only the finest fruit makes it to the crusher. The grapes
are gently destemmed, then undergo around 7 days of cold
soak with a high amount of whole berries, and some whole
clusters (as noted below). There is no sulfur added at crush.
The wines undergo a total of approximately 30-40 days of
maceration with indigenous yeasts and are then moved straight
to barrel, with their gross lees, for approximately 19 months
(longer for the Bone Rock) with no rackings until the wines are
prepared for bottling. Smith favors 350 and 400-liter barrels over
the more standard 225/228 liter barrique. Smith selects the
barrels he thinks are most expressive to site for his singlevineyard wines, then uses the rest of the barrels, which he defines as the punchier, juicier wines, for the Broken Stones
bottling, which is sourced from all of the vineyards in the Saxum
lineup.
- Released January 2012
Aging
Aaged in 60% new oak.
