NEW VINTAGE : HAUT ESPOIR ESTATE SYRAH 2005

I'm terribly excited to taste this wine from South Africa's Franschoek region! since the '04 vintage to date is still my favorite and staple wine since it first touched my lips back in 2005, I'm eager to see how is the vintage 2005 year. With only 4720 bottles produced, this wine underwent malolactic, unfined and barrel aged for 9 months followed by a further tank maturation for another 4 months. unfortunately this time it is not new French oak, so I do expect it to be a bit more earthly & "Bordeaux Oak" flavors. To me, this is rather unusual and meticulous wine making by the exciting Nikey van Zyl and before I taste the wine, I sincerely hope that it will blow me away as his 2004 creation did!

COLOUR : amazingly thick and inky deep violet and purple, with rather poor clarity. VERY prominent tears and some evidence of sediments and particles. It looks very youthful and deadly.

NOSE : Overwhelming burst of RIPE blackberries and dark cherries. A very clean aroma of garden herbs with some coarse peppers, with very earthly tones. Very rounded nose but slight alcohol burn due to age.

PALATE : AMAZING! not as rounded and balanced oak compared to the 2004, but this is a beautiful elegant wine! The palate is light on the tongue, a lovely silky texture and well structured tannins greet your mouth as soon as you taste it. It has a blackberry skin finish with an amazing lip smacking length.



EVOLUTION / CONCLUSION
After waiting for 30mins, the fruits are beginning to take a back seat to the spices and earthly characters in the nose, with very nice subtle white chocolate. The aromas are starting to remind me of Beaujolais wines.
This is a TRULY excellent wine, with a very unique version of the Syrah grape. I'm so happy that I'm distributing this wine man.....but sorry to say, it does not replace the 2004 as my favorite, but definitely among my "Wines to remember"!!