2016

Variety: Chenin Blanc Colour: Bright pale straw green color Nose: Fresh aromas of pome and tropical fruits with a subtle hint of spice. Palate: The displays flavours of spicy pome fruits with underlying citrus and some tropical fruit nuances. The palate has a nicely balanced weight and a creamy textural element derived from some barrel fermentation, finishing with subtle sweetness balanced by fresh natural acidity. Style: The wine is made in an early drinking, soft, fruit-driven style with great intensity of flavours, a subtle textural complexity from a small barrel fermented component and balanced by fresh acidity with a hint of sweetness. Food Match: The wine partners beautifully with mildly-spiced Asian dishes or fresh seafood Alc/Vol: 13.5% pH: 3.14 Total Acidity: 6.8g/L Harvest Date: March 9, 2016 Oak Maturation: 10% fermentation in three year old French oak Bottling Date: July 11, 2016 Cellaring Potential: Made for immediate enjoyment

Vintage Vineyard The Wine The vines enjoyed a near perfect growing The fruit for our Chenin Blanc is sourced from The Chenin Blanc vineyards were harvested on season, with warm, dry spring weather and three Estate vineyard blocks. Voyager Estate has March 9, 2016 during the cool night conditions. relatively light wind conditions prevailing along some of the oldest Chenin Blanc vines in The fruit was delivered to the winery for the Margaret River coast. The summer conditions Margaret River with one of our blocks being a immediate pressing to ensure the aromatics were nice and warm without excessive heat, until part of the original 1978 plantings. The vineyard were preserved. Once pressed, the juice was a curveball arrived during 18 to 20 of January soils are typically gravelly loams with a stony settled to aid clarification, prior to racking and with a rare weather event for this time of the clay subsoil with excellent drainage and good innoculation with selected yeast strain QA23. year occurring. This resulted in 80mm of rain moisture holding capacity, producing vines with Alcoholic fermentation was kept at 15 degrees falling over the region, which was a timely exceptional balance. All the vines are carefully Celsius to retain aromatics. Once completed the watering from Mother Nature for the reds - but hand-pruned, shoot thinned and are cultivated to wine was left on yeast lees for four weeks with not so timely for the whites which were only a a target yield of ten tonnes per hectare. regular stirring to enhance the textural couple of weeks from harvest. This was followed components of the palate. Ten percent of the by some cooler conditions in late January and blend was fermented in 3rd use French oak to aid early February, this combination of events had complexity and then aged a further two months the effect of delaying the white grape harvest - with weekly batonnage prior to blending, with our first pick of on the filtration and bottling on July 11, 2016. February 8, which was one week later than the past few years. Harvest of the whites progressed slowly with the team picking small parcels of fruit each day, with Chardonnay being harvested during mid February to early March followed by Semillon, and Chenin Blanc during the late February to mid-March period. The 2016 vintage was a very strong year overall for the whites which all displayed bright, intense fruit flavours with excellent natural acidity.

Steve James Manager of Winemaking and Viticulture with Winemaker, Travis Lemm, and Vineyard Manager, Glen Ryan

For more information contact: Voyager Estate Wine Room Telephone: +61 8 9757 6354 Email: [email protected]