Mt Difficulty Ghost Town Syrah 2023
Buy Online
For the best pricing and free NZ shipping, order this wine from The Foley Wine Club. Plus earn generous loyalty points on every case you order.
The Foley Wine Club
Tasting Notes
Mt Difficulty Ghost Town Syrah 2023 is handcrafted in very limited quantities from Mt Difficulty's Bendigo vineyard in Central Otago. One of the few Syrahs you'll find from a region so famous for Pinot Noir.
A deep, opaque crimson Syrah with lavender, crushed schist and graphite over black and blue berry fruit on the nose. The palate bursts with jubey red and black pastilles, fine milk chocolate though the mid palate tempered with a layer of dried herbs - thyme and rosemary - from the whole bunch component. The finish is dense and structured, with firm but fine grained tannin, and a pleasant alpine amaro note to close.
CELLARING POTENTIAL
We expect this wine to evolve with careful cellaring for another 10-15 years.
Download Full Tasting Notes Previous Vintage Tasting Notes
Vintage Notes
VINTAGE 2023
The 2023 growing season in Central Otago was vastly different to the rest of the country. We came out of a mild but wet winter in 2022, straight into warm and unusually still spring which meant strong shoot growth and very successful fruit set. Post flowering, the summer heat increased, and Cromwell experienced it’s hottest January on record. It was looking to be an early and condensed warm vintage and we started picking in the middle of March.
However, a blast of cold weather from the south during the first week of April, along with some rain was a welcome handbrake on ripening, which meant the majority of our blocks were able to hang out on the vine longer to developmore flavour and tannin ripeness. This extend out harvest out until mid May, making it one of the longer vintages at Mt Difficulty but we are excited by the quality that was achieved.
WINEMAKING CONSIDERATIONS
The different clones were picked in two passes by hand. The fruit was priarily destemmed, with the MS clone retained as a 100% whole bunch fermentation. Once processed, the fruit was cold soaked for 6 days before warming for indigenous fermentation. Very minimal extraction during fermentation, and the wines were pressed off skins around 20 days in total. Settled in tank for several days before racking to French Oak, with only 10% new barrels. A mixture of 500L Puncheons and 228L barriques were used for elevage, to preserve the aromatic purity of the wine. The wine was bottled unfined and unfiltered after 12 months barrel aging.
Alc. 14.5% T/A 5.9.0gL-1 pH 3.62 Residual Sugar 0 gL-1