Clos de Gat Ayalon Valley 2018

Cellar for up to 9 years. Decant 1 hour before serving. Eyal Rotem founded Clos de Gat in 1998 in partnership with Maison Sichel, a negociant house based in Bordeaux. Over the intervening years he has succeeded in creating one of Israels most successful boutique wineries with some 19 hectares of vineyards planted with international varieties. To showcase the local terroir and natural beauty of the grapes Rotem practices minimal intervention in the winery and harvests his grapes by hand. Crafted predominantly from Cabernet Sauvignon with a smaller proportion of Merlot, this is the flagship wine of the Clos de Gat collection. The grapes are rigorously sorted and then fermented in open tanks using wild yeasts found naturally in the winery and on the skins of the grapes. The young wine is then aged in oak barrels Rotem imports directly from France for 18 months and bottled without fining or filtering. On the nose there are enticing aromas of cassis, ripe plum and crushed dark berries while the first sip reveals a powerful flavour profile with dark fruit and hints of sweet spice, leather and woodsmoke from the maturation in oak. The firm tannins and full body make this a great contender for additional cellaring over the next decade or so.