Te Mata Bullnose Syrah 2021

Reviews

Sam Kim, Wine Orbit: 99/100. Expressing precision and purity, combined with brooding strength and complexity, this is spectacular and breath-taking. Immediately appealing with dark plum, sweet cherry, graphite, olive, spicy oak and floral aromas, it’s succulent and fleshy in the mouth delivering layers of seductive flavours backed by beautifully infused tannins. It’s mouthfilling and velvety with a prolonged engaging finish.

James Suckling (JamesSuckling.com): 96/100. This includes some Gimblett Gravel fruit, which gives black and white-pepper, iodine, lead-pencil, and black-fruit aromas and flavors. Tar and asphalt, too. Full-bodied and tied in with a lovely structure and focus. Linear and very racy. Terrific integration and structure. Drinkable now, but better in two or three years.

Huon Hooke (The Real Review): 96/100.  Almost glass-staining purple colour, very bright; the bouquet loaded with an amalgam of brown spice aromas, toasted nuts too, including clove, nutmeg and pepper. A powerful, concentrated and tensioned wine with bright acidity and firm but measured tannins that lead into a very long finish. Great potential here.

Bob Campbell, MW (The Real Review): 95/100. An almost inky red with impressive density that’s underpinned with vibrant acidity that gives the wine energy. Slightly closed and youthful, it will respond well to careful bottle age.

Erin Larkin, Robert Parker's Wine Advocate: 94+/100.The 2021 Bullnose Syrah gives us Asian five spice, musk, red dirt, gravel and blueberry on the nose. There's a distinctly darker fruit character on the palate, with red licorice, pomegranate, savory and gentle meat nuances. This is fleshy but with energy and finesse. Matured for 16 months in French oak (33% new), it's almost creamy, with hints of cream soda and sarsaparilla, and there's a spice/blood root character. This wine achieves that aspirational balance between sweet fruit and savory tannin. Drink Date: 2023 - 2035.

Michael Cooper: 5 stars & Super Classic. This consistently classy red is estate-grown and hand-picked in the Bullnose and Isosceles vineyards, in the Bridge Pa Triangle, and the Hotspur vineyard in the Gimblett Gravels. Matured for 16 months in French oak barriques (partly new), the dark, dense 2021 vintage (5★) is still very youthful. Deeply coloured, with a fragrant, spicy bouquet, it is mouthfilling, with concentrated, vigorous blackcurrant, plum, spice and nut flavours, highly refined tannins and a harmonious, savoury, lasting finish. Best drinking 2026+.

Tasting Note:

Magnificent deep magenta, Bullnose ’21 entices with floral fragrance of lavender, violets and a dusting of cardamon and cinnamon developing on the palate into black cherry syrup, blackberry and Turkish delight. Grace notes of char, truffle and pink peppercorns appear in layer upon layer of velvet tannins that run from front to back in the wine - extending the mid-palate presence into a long, sustained finish of saturated and spiced red berries.

Aromas and flavours:

Additional information

Type: Red wine

Varietal: 100% Syrah

Food match: dry

Vineyards: Bullnose Vineyard, Hawke's Bay, New Zealand. First planted in 1990, the Bullnose Vineyard's old red iron soils produce Te Mata's Estate finest Syrah. Separate parcels of fully ripened syrah grapes were hand harvested from Te Mata Estate’s Bullnose, Isosceles and Hotspur Vineyards on 25 and 26 March 2021.

Winemaking: The individual lots were each destemmed and given a traditional warm-plunged fermentation. The resulting wines underwent extended maceration on skins before pressing and then a secondary malolactic fermentation. The separate wines were then run to a mixture of new and seasoned French oak barriques for 16 months’ maturation. During this time, they were regularly topped and racked, before blending and then bottling in November 2022.

The name Bullnose: Vineyard partners Michael Morris and Peter Cowley named Bullnose after an early Morris Cowley car, nicknamed Bullnose due to its distinctive radiator. The bull emblem that appears on the label is drawn from the car’s radiator crest.

Alcohol: 13.5% vol

Residual sugar: dry

Bottle size: 0.75l

Notice: Contains sulfites, egg

Cellaring potential: 2036

Closure: Cork

Produced and bottled by: Te Mata Estate, PO Box 8335, Havelock North, Hawkes Bay 4157, New Zealand.

Distributor: vinabonus GmbH, Simmedenweg 40, 34134 Kassel, Germany.