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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.
This is classic Settlement. Picked on 14th March and cropped at 40 hl/ha, it’s already super impressive and loaded with succulent red berry and sour cherry fruit backed up by blue florals, forest floor and a streak of brown spice. It’s so nuanced, refined and powdery; that Paterson weaves this clay-rich site into something so finessed is the sign of a great winemaker. Lots of whole berries, delicate excitation—jugotage!—and slow winemaking may provide the answers.