Iron Hills Vineyards is a specialist producer of Syrah wines and also from the 2007 vintage, Viognier.

Our aim is to produce small batches of high quality wine, usually vineyard specific and so show the variety of styles that Syrah is capable of.

There are two series of wine.

SERINE is a French style Syrah. The aim is to emulate a Cote Rotie style using practices in common use amongst the best producers in the Northern Rhone.

IRON HILLS is a more typical New Zealand style. More new oak is used and the grapes tend to be harvested above the 23 brix level we aim for with Serine, producing a bigger fruit driven style.

However there is some commonality in style. We believe in a supple silky mouth feel and with a combination of our viticultural techniques and very low cropping rates, all our wines are plush and full in the mouth, with complex flavours yet retain an elegance. All our wines are excellent with food but of course are good on their own.

2011 RELEASE
Three wines will be released this year:

2010 Serine
Once again in our French Cote Rotie style and as good as the 2006.

2010 Ironhills Syrah
This year a bigger riper style with an excellent structure, fruit rich with lovely big tannins.

2009 Ironhills Whole Bunch Syrah
An experimental wine which had 20% whole bunches in the ferment. i.e these were not desteemed. This was a trial wine to look at the effects of not desteeming with the aim of introducing more savoury characters into Serine. A bold wine both lots of Syrah character with red brambly fruits attentuated by a savoury component and freshness from the stems.

Historically Syrah was always made with whole bunches but in an attempt to modernise the wine the French producers largely went to the conventional New World style of desteeming. Not all though, for example Jamet in Cote Rotie is still 100% whole bunch as is Clape in Cornas. In recent years some portion of whole bunch has been introduced back into Hermitage and Cote Rotie wine to add some complexity and savouriness. Usually this is only 10 - 30%. Often its used to balance out overt fruitiness in big years. They call it keeping freshness as it introduces a sour element. In Syrah this has a spicy character in Pinot Noir in Burgundy where the technique is often used it shows early as sour cherry. As the wine balances out this integrates in improving balance and complexity.

A visit in January to Hermitage and Cote Rotie was to further investigate the effects of using whole bunch in the ferements and from this vintage we are planning to use at least 10% in Serine.