This past weekend I smoked a brisket as we were having friends over to do a tasting of a few reds. The wines were blinded. First up was a wine which had slight bricking on the edges. A slight clue to some age on this wine. This red wine had a faint spice aroma and just a hint of dark berries. In the mouth it carried the berries flavor but was dominated by tannic backbone and a bit of greenness that one finds with cabernet sauvignon. The finish was long from the tannin structure. Overall I was thinking this was a 5-6 year old New World wine from a cool vintage and not anything like a west coast US cabernet sauvignon/meritage wine. Well it turned out to be a 2014 Pask blend of merlot-cabernet sauvignon-malbec with the first 2 as the main components. This is known as Trilliant , a small batch product from New Zealand’s Gimblett Gravels region. Nice wine could use a little more time to soften the tannins and let the fruit shine a bit more. I was curious if 2014 was a cool year in Gimblett Gravels and found out through this site … Gimblettgravels.com … that it was one of the warmer years. I was surprised by that. This site has some other good information about the region and the wineries producing wines from there. Would be curious to hear from others how they find the non-pinot noir based red wines from Gimblett Gravels.
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Sounds like a super interesting wine. I wonder how their Chardonnay is…
Nice note thanks. Gimblett Gravels is a sub region of the Hawkes Bay and is is known for Cab blends, Syrah and Chardonnay. Quite a bit too warm for Pinot. Lots of nice wines being made on the Gimblett Gravels. Generally reliable region for getting Cab and Syrah based wines to a good level of ripeness and phenolic maturity.
Brodie