Winemaker Notes
Blend: 76% Merlot, 14% Cabernet Sauvignon, 8% Cabernet Franc, 2% Malbec
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A brilliant wine that showcases the prowess of merlot in Hawkes Bay, the violet-like florals are entrancing and the array of blueberry and plum fruits on offer nicely framed in some earth and chocolate. The palate is seamlessly delivered as a sweeping mat of fine tannins. Flavours twist from berries to stony minerals as it closes.
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Wine & Spirits
This stylish merlot-dominant blend grows in the gravelly soils left behind from the 1876 flood of the Ngaruroro River. The wine offers refinement and succulent fruit countered by firm, ample tannins. Saturated plummy fruit and cassis curl up with notes of violets and woodsy spice, making this an excellent demonstration of Bordeaux varieties grown in the right place.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Is it possible for a wine to smell velvety? The combination of ripe black cherries and plums with vanilla and toast on the nose of the 2015 Te Kahu Gimblett Gravels Vineyard has that effect. It's a plush, medium to full-bodied wine on the palate, the oak gently channeling the fruit into a steady flow and into a long, textured finish tinged with dried herbs. This year's blend is 76% Merlot, 14% Cabernet Sauvignon, 8% Cabernet Franc and 2% Malbec.
One of the world’s most classic and popular styles of red wine, Bordeaux-inspired blends have spread from their homeland in France to nearly every corner of the New World. Typically based on either Cabernet Sauvignon or Merlot and supported by Cabernet Franc, Malbec and Petit Verdot, the best of these are densely hued, fragrant, full of fruit and boast a structure that begs for cellar time. Somm Secret—Blends from Bordeaux are generally earthier compared to those from the New World, which tend to be fruit-dominant.
An eclectic region on the east coast of the North Island, Hawkes Bay extends from wide, fertile, coastal plains, inland, to the coast range, whose peaks reach as high as 5,300 feet. While the flatter areas were historically more popular because they are easier to cultivate, their alluvial soils can be too fertile for vines. In the late 20th century, the drive for quality led growers to the hills where soils are free-draining, limestone-rich and more suited to producing high quality wines.
Over the passing of time, the old Ngaruroro River laid down deep, gravelly beds, which were subsequently exposed after a huge flood in the 1860’s. In the 1980s growers identified this stretch, which continues for approximately 800 ha, and named it the Gimblett Gravels. The zone has proven to be ideal for the production of excellent red wines, particularly Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot and Syrah.
Today the area takes well-earned recognition for its Bordeaux blends and other reds. Expressive of intense stewed red and black berry with gentle herbaceous characters, Gimblett Gravels wines are suggestive of their cool climate origin, and on par with other top-notch Bordeaux blends around the globe.
Chardonnay is the top white grape in Hawkes Bay, making elegant wines, strong in stone fruit character. Sauvignon blanc comes in close behind, notable for its tropical, fruit forward qualities.