• Dry style
• Vanilla creme & warm spice
• Plum & dark cherry
• Cocoa powder tannins

"The perfumed bouquet shows dark and purple fruit characters with warm spice, olive, cedar and floral notes. It’s splendidly concentrated and beautifully layered on the palate, delivering excellent fruit power combined with depth and complexity, finishing persistent and engaging. The wine is gorgeously framed by an abundance of powdery tannins, making it classically structured while remaining finely balanced and graceful. A blend of 48% Cabernet Sauvignon, 37% Merlot and 15% Cabernet Franc. At its best: 2022 to 2030" Sam Kim, Wine Orbit, Mar 2020

Dark and bright, Awatea Cabernets/Merlot ’18 is inky purple with an electric crimson edge. From a warm and dry vintage, Awatea Cabernets/Merlot ‘18 shows ripe blackberry and black currant aromatics with elements of vanilla creme and sandalwood. On the palate there’s a banquet of plum, raspberry, dried herbs, and lingering dark cherry, set out across cedar and cocoa powder tannins. Classical in structure with fine balance and length, this is a generous Awatea of resplendent purity and detail.

The grapes for Awatea ’18 were hand harvested from Te Mata Estate’s vineyards between 25 March and 20 April 2018.

The separate parcels of grapes were destemmed before a traditional warm, plunged fermentation and extended maceration on skins. The resulting wines were then run to new and seasoned French oak barrels for 16 months’ ageing. Throughout this time, they were regularly topped and racked. The separate wines were blended in January 2019, then returned to barrel for their second winter. The finished wine was then egg white fined and bottled in October 2019. The final blend is 48% cabernet sauvignon, 37% merlot, 15% cabernet franc.

Awatea takes its name from the historic ship SS Awatea (a Maori word meaning “Eye of the Dawn”) that sailed the Auckland – Sydney – Wellington route in the late 1930s. The Awatea was requisitioned as a troop transport in WWII and was sunk off Algeria in 1942.