2010 Cloudburst Chardonnay

The 2010 Vintage was preceded by a winter of abundant rains. The growing season, however, was warm and dry, resulting in excellent fruit set. Hot summer days coupled with cooler nights worked magic on the Chardonnay, which was harvested at the end of February. Our 2010 exhibits exquisite balance, flavor and concentration.

Tasting Notes

This wine shows a golden straw color. The nose shows great aromatic complexity, combining quince and stone fruit, with a suggestion of whipped fig and pineapple compote coupled with a flinty note of struck stone. Rich in taste, the palate has pear and almond and lemon curd, underlain by a strict line of refreshing acidity. This elegant wine has great length and a beguiling complexity. Alcohol content: 14%

2010 Cloudburst Cabernet

The 2010 Vintage was preceded by a winter of abundant rains. The growing season, however, was warm and dry, resulting in excellent fruit set. The hot weather moderated during March and April, leading to perfect ripening conditions for red varieties, characterized by excellent deep color, superb fresh flavor, well-balanced acids and silkily mature tannins in our Cabernet Sauvignon.

Tasting Notes

The wine has a brilliant deep blackcurrant color. The nose shows a rich collection of violet, blackcurrant, raspberry and dark plum, overlaying a chocolaty mocha nuance. The palate is soft and inviting, with flavors of cherry, mulberry, anise and dark berry fruits with a hint of nutmeg spice. It has a lingering finish with a savory complexity and robust tannins. Alcohol content: 13%

2011 Cloudburst Chardonnay

The 2011 Vintage began after a fairly dry winter followed upon by a dry spring. Some relief arrived in January with some light rains. This was followed in February and March by extremely hot summer days, with quite unusually warm summer nights, speeding up the growing season. The resulting 2011 Cloudburst Chardonnay has a powerful intensity of flavor and a refreshingly stony line to the palate.

Tasting Notes

Pale golden straw with a delicate brightness. Complex and bold aromas of mango, vanilla wafer and caulk, lingering with faint spearmint. The mouth feel is exquisite: very seductive soft and delicate with an exciting burst of fruit in the mid-palate. The middle notes continue to show mango, but with pineapple and bananas, vanilla bean, graham cracker, cinnamon and creamed caramel. A touch of dried grass, ginger and bitter greens elevate the fruit flavors to another dimension. The finish is an everlasting mix of lemon zest and cream, like a lemon meringue pie. This wine has bright acidity and subtle oak allowing it to be paired with foods, but balanced and elegant enough to drink on its own. Alcohol content: 14.1%

2011 Cloudburst Cabernet

Tasting Notes

A brambly bright wine carrying delicate lifted aromas of blueberry perfume and cedarbox with a hint of mint. Tasting of briar fruit, mostly blackcurrant, with notes of mulberry, dark cherry and satsuma plum. The delicate soft pallet has supple, velvety tannins, a vibrant acidity and a clean mouth-watering finish. This is a wine of finesse and subtlety, which carries a delicious liveliness all the way to the lingering perfumed end. Alcohol content: 13.2%

2012 Cloudburst Chardonnay

The 2012 Vintage repeated 2011's hot conditions, with warmer than usual nights accelerating the time of vintage several weeks advance of its usual timing. The heat created intense flavors in the Chardonnay and it was picked earlier than previous years, enabling the retention of strong natural acidity and great freshness and length.

The Cabernet benefited from the moderating temperatures which arrived towards the end of vintage, developing intense fruit flavors with well ripened tannins, assuring great longevity.

2012 Cloudburst Cabernet Sauvignon

The Cabernet benefited from the moderating temperatures which arrived towards the end of vintage, developing intense fruit flavors with well ripened tannins, assuring great longevity.

2012 Cloudburst Malbec

The 2012 Vintage repeated 2011's hot conditions, with warmer than usual nights accelerating the time of vintage several weeks advance of its usual timing. The heat created intense flavors in the Chardonnay and it was picked earlier than in previous years, enabling the retention of strong natural acidity and great freshness and length.

The Cabernet benefited from the moderating temperatures, which arrived towards the end of vintage, developing intense fruit flavors with well-ripened tannins, assuring great longevity.

2013 Cloudburst Chardonnay

The 2013 vintage was characterized by early season coolness right up to the beginning of the year, when the heat of summer fully arrived. Summer was typified by warm to hot days followed by warm nights. This was accompanied by lower than normal rainfall in January and February Chardonnay benefited from these conditions and the grapes developed great vibrancy and intensity. Good Marri flowering resulted in minimal bird pressure, and lack of rainfall and good sea breezes led to an absence of disease pressure. March brought cooling temperatures, allowing our reds to ripen gradually, developing extraordinary depths of flavor, weight and concentration. Truly a great year.

2013 Cloudburst Cabernet Sauvignon

2013 Cloudburst Malbec

2014 Cloudburst Chardonnay

Winter 2013 was very wet, with more than a meter of rain recorded, and the vines benefited from exceptional soil moisture and vigorous early growth. The summer was virtually dry with practically no rain. The days were warm and nights cool. Outstanding blossoming in the Marri again kept bird pressure in check throughout the growing season, and the grapes remained healthy throughout. Autumn arrived with cooler days and nights, leading to a gradual ripening of Cabernet. Another terrific year.

Tasting Notes

The color is a pale gold straw with highlights of lime. The complex aroma blends stone fruit and almond and wet river stones. The elegant palate is layered with nectarine, pear, quince honey, marzipan and flint. The subtly creamy mouthfeel gives away to a fine minerality and persistent acid finish. A wine of tremendous depth and elegance. Alcohol content: 13%

Tasting Notes

This wine has a dark fruit fragrance with chocolate and spice. It tastes of cassis, mulberry and black cherry, and of savory herbs and slate and ash, combining seamlessly with an oyster shell minerality. It is graceful, balanced and intense with great length, structure and vivacit. Alcohol content: 13.5%

Tasting Notes

The 2012 Cloudburst Malbec tastes of super ripe black plums and dark cherries, and blueberries with a wet tobacco, mint masterstock, ramen, umami character of immense length and allure. Texturally, the wine is like biting into a crisp red apple. And there’s a complete and utter deliverance of retronasal flavor. Alcohol content: 13.1%

Tasting Notes

The 2013 Cloudburst Chardonnay is a richly satisfying wine. On the nose, fine lemon myrtle dances with a waxed grapefruit character, underlain by notes of gunflint and gunsmoke. These flavors are picked up in the lovely palate, which has a poised citrus character with a fresh quartz restraint. There are traces of roasting walnuts, acorns, lemon blossom, sunflowers in bloom, maize dust, semolina and lightly toasted marshmallow. An elegant wine, its strong line of acidity holds it together even as it warms up in the glass. This is truly a wine that can be served at room temperature. A powerful and satisfying wine that lingers in the mouth and imagination. Alc. 13.9%

Tasting Notes

The 2013 Cloudburst Cabernet Sauvignon is a dream of the darkest forest fruits ever seen, combining black plums and blood plum reduction, with notes of seasoned black pudding, morcilla sausage, and a smokiness of doused campfire and peat, all lined with salt spray with a dash of seaweed, seasoned with a splash of Speyside single malt whiskey. Alcohol Content: 13.5%

Tasting Notes

The 2013 Cloudburst Malbec vibrates with crème de violette, blood plum, apple and clove reduction, light balsamic, wet tobacco leaf, and the essence of garrique, as if oils of lavender, thyme, sage, and wormwood hover in the sun. A slight sour plum skin character intrigues and plays with your tongue. While tannins so firm, they pucker, lending the finish a mouthwatering grip that doesn’t let go. Alcohol content: 13%

Tasting Notes

VINTAGE REPORT 2015

Spring 2014 was the rainiest so far for Cloudburst, yet was characterized by consistently mild temperatures. The vines took off with great vigor immediately after pruning, and had an extended and perfect flowering. This was followed by a warm and dry summer, gracefully free of excessive heat spikes. This consistent warmth, coupled with mild nights and low velocity maritime breezes, resulted in deeply flavorful grapes. Virtually no rain fell during the first few months of 2015, which created perfect ripening conditions. All grapes were hand harvested and completed wild primary and secondary fermentations well in advance of the heavy rains which arrived in late March.

2015 Cloudburst Chardonnay

A vibrant wine of great depth and purity, the 2015 Cloudburst Chardonnay has a mineral intensity and effortless length that resonates and captivates.

This is a powerfully delicious wine, with gorgeous complexity and outstanding balance.

Tasting Notes

A concentrated honeyed marzipan confection melded with dark peach, acorn, roasted chestnuts, peanut skin, river stone, brioche, butterscotch and Meyer lemon curd.

2014 Cloudburst Cabernet Sauvignon

A powerful, yet graceful wine of great purity, texture and complexity, the 2014 Cloudburst Cabernet Sauvignon has striking vitality, opulence and generosity. It sets the palate alive. This is a delicious, clean, intense and ripe wine, with a vitality that is simply lovely to drink.

Tasting Notes

The wine is profoundly perfumed, with violets to the fore, floral yet fleeting, followed with blueberry, black olive and bayleaf, a mahogany bass note, and a suggestion of anise and lifted exotic spices. In the palate, the wine is fine, glossy, and concentrated. It is a precise and pure miracle that frolics between flavour and texture, at once a silken sheet and web of light -- cedary tannin underlays a richness of delicious ripe mulberry fruit, with black olive and chocolate and tobacco leaf and satin cassis dancing with a flourish of spice that extends all the way to the astonishingly long finish.

2014 Cloudburst Malbec

A densely flavored, deeply layered, majestic wine with tremendous vibrancy, the 2014 Cloudburst Malbec is absolutely delicious. From the first aromatic sniff, to the fantastically long finish, it is a wine that satisfies on every level. Intense, yet poetic, the wine is an inky magenta, with terrific weight.

Tasting Notes

This wine is a perfect melding of crème de violette, damson plum, baked apple, mocha, blackstrap molasses, ripe black cherries, boysenberries, blackberries, and black currents. A line of hickory smoke, dark wet tobacco and black pepper adds mystery, depth and grip to a very rich, delicious and alluring wine with a profound and satisfying finish.