Sisters Wine Tasting Notes

David Evans manager winemaker Passage Rock wines

Welcome to passage rock I’m David Evans, I’m the co-founder and wine maker at passage rock wines on the beautiful Waiheke island.

Today, I’m here to taste our sisters with you sisters is one of our um, pretty famous blends, it’s one of the most consumed red wines on waheke island and it’s our blend of syrah malbec and petit verdot.

So it’s a beautiful wine that we have made since 1998 and it is a wine we call it Sisters because it’s named after the three rocks out in the bay here , so they’re called the three sisters and also the first vintage. We ever made was made using some grapes from my sister’s vineyard up at matakana, so we called the wine the sisters and it was meant to evoke the the joy of having sisters, and I have five of them .

It is also a wine. That’s a little bit lighter a little bit more playful and really has a lovely appeal and softness to it in the palate. So I’m just going to pour a little taste of that to go here.

Today, I’m here to taste our sisters with you Sisters is one of our pretty famous blends, it’s one of the most consumed red wines on Waheke Island, and it’s our blend of Syrah malbec and petit verdot.

So it’s a beautiful wine that we have made since 1998 and it is a wine we call Sisters because it’s named after the three rocks out in the bay here , so they’re called the three sisters and also the first vintage.

The wine we ever made was made using some grapes from my sister’s vineyard up at matakana, so we called the wine the Sisters, and it was meant to evoke the the joy of having sisters, and I have five of them .

It is also a wine. That’s a little bit lighter, a little bit more playful and really has a lovely appeal and softness to it in the palate. So I’m just going to pour a little taste of that here.

here we go So our sisters is made with, like I said, syrah, Petit verdot and malbec, so they’re three fairly non traditional varieties to blend, but we think this just gives a lovely expression of  the three varieties which originate in france. If you want to have a look at this wine, it’s got a really nice  purple, deep purple, color with a a lighter hue on the outside, and that just shows the wine. This wine is 2020 and its depth shows the vintage and the hue shows the age!

So it’s already nearly four years old, but it’s still showing lots of vibrancy to it and a really good depth of color. So this is not like a really pale wine like you get from pinot noir and this is kind of a bit more of a medium weight, but still soft wine, so I’m going to give it a little swirl. This is to release the aroma into the top of the glass I’m going to give it a swirl, and then I’m going to have a little smell of this beautiful wine, so what will you’ll notice when you smell this wine? Is you get a beautiful array of different kinds of aromas, so delicious? Some of them is like there’s this really perfumed violet smell to the wine and there’s also some  cedy oak There’s also some really dark forest fruit, and I always like to think of this.

Wine has a little bit of forest floor to it so like it’s got that kind of aroma like when you’re walking in some pristine bush, which passage rock, is surrounded by. You get this  This lovely smell of like nature, and there’s this just these lovely aromas coming out of the spine.

So, when I taste this wine, I also lean my head forward a little bit and I suck a little bit of air over the wine and what that does is it brings the aromas from from  from my mouth up into
What’s called my old factory sensor, so that brings aromas up to the top of my nose to where I detect the most smells, and so what that does is highlights all the aromas I’ve had before, and also just by warming the wine up. In my mouth it changes the profile a little bit.

So then more of this kind of cedary oak comes out and some of  the dark cherry flavors as well. They come through on on the nose and with the palette, you can notice, that this is like a reasonably full bodied wine. So it gives you a nice warmth to it. It’s got a really nice warmth and a good length so kind of when you taste it.

It’s just got these lovely , lingering flavours  of cherries, of cedar of fruit and it’s really a lovely summer and winter wine . You don’t need a lot of food with this wine, but you can definitely have it with any of your normal kind of red wine foods, But it’s really great easy drinking, warm rich wine and that’s probably, what makes it one of the Waiheke Islands most popular wines.

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Just look at the view, enjoy the island and come and see us at our restaurant cheers.

David Evans manager and winemaker Passage Rock wines