2006 The Coppermine Road

© Matthew Martin

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"It offers aromas of pain grille, pencil lead, licorice, black currant, and blackberry liqueur. This leads to a flamboyant Cabernet with gobs of ripe fruit and notes of chocolate emerging. The wine has well-concealed tannins, excellent balance, and a 60-second finish. It will benefit from 5-7 years of cellaring and will drink well through 2025."

This wine gathers its name from a road nearby d’Arenberg, Coppermine Road that runs parallel to our very best Cabernet Sauvignon vineyard in McLaren Vale.  The grapes for this wine come largely from a near extinct clone of Cabernet Sauvignon. This unnamed clone yields no more than one tonne per acre because of its very poor setting ability and the tiny size of its berries. However, the quality of the grapes is far superior, with wonderful violet and blackcurrant aromas, great acidity and long, intense fine- grain tannins.

This wine has a deep, dark, vibrant black appearance suggesting a full-bodied dry red. The aroma is dense and complex with a mix of fragrant fruit dominated by cassis, blackcurrants, mulberries, coffee, toffee and dark chocolate with fine cedar oak developing in the background. 

The palate shows a lighter, fresher, more elegant style of wine compared to recent vintages but is overwhelmingly complex and compressed. Young primary flavours of dark black fruits, violets, cassis and red currants mixed with edges of dried herbs, green bean and capsicum dominate. As the wine opens up an abundant mix of violets, earthy notes and mulberries appear over dark fruits with really tight flowery tannins and minerals that fan out on the finish. 

The great fruit, length and fragrance of this wine show the overall elegance of this wonderful vintage.

The Cellaring Potential
With bottle age, the wine will become more harmonious and gain more complex characters of chocolate, truffle, cigar box and earth. Varietal eucalyptus and bell pepper hints which are indicative of McLaren Vale may also come to the fore but are well-integrated with the other developing characters, maintaining an even palate weight with a seamless and persistently rolling mineral/ fruit acidity.

The quality of vintage 2006 was very good across most varieties with fruit characters noticeably fragrant with good acidity and excellent length of flavour. 

The lead up to vintage was uneventful with average winter rain followed by heavy rains in spring that resulted in vines with healthy, balanced canopies on most soils. A mild, early, summer leading into a warmer period during veraison stopped vegetative growth allowing vines to channel energy into the fruit. A prolonged cool period occurred after veraison in February with some rain which enabled the fruit to ripen without any stress. Finally the warmth returned in March with cool evening temperatures to complete ripening in almost perfect conditions enhancing fruit flavour and richness without diluting levels of natural acidity. Picking was staggered with many parcels picked in wonderful autumn conditions.

Each batch of fruit received is gently crushed in our Demoisy open-mouthed, rubber-toothed crusher so as many of the berries as possible remain whole. They are then transferred to open fermenters where the must of seeds and skins are permanently submerged beneath the free run juice. The must receives no plunging or pumping over while fermentation occurs. Once the primary fermentation is two-thirds complete, traditional foot-treading takes place prior to basket-pressing. The wine is then transferred to barrel to complete its primary and secondary fermentation. After 18 months, only the barrels from the best batches are selected for the final blend.