White Boar bottle image
White Boar bottle image

White Boar 2004

Tasting Notes

Initial tasting indicates a wine that is far cleaner than an Amarone, with more fruit and colour, and with a RS much less than most commercial Chardonnays and certainly less than Amarones in general. The nose and palate show an almost bewildering array of flavours: characters of road tar, mace, nutmeg, earth, pudding fruits, soy, roses, Cedary oak, Turkish Delight and rum and raisin chocolate are combined with mouth coating soft tannins and unbelievable length. The ‘White Boar’ delivers such a multitude of different layers of flavours as the wine evolves in the glass that it demands going back to time and again.

In many regards 2004 was a perfect vintage: decent winter rains, a mild growing season, no significant falls of rain during vintage and an overall long cool growing season. Certainly there were healthy crops which saw some bunch thinning at veraison. The result? Fragrant, perfumed red wines which show excellent varietal character, supple tannins and overall balance.

Though inspired by the ‘Amarone’ wines from Valpolicella, ‘White Boar’ is a different beast altogether. Rather than harvesting the grapes and drying them on racks, the canes are cut once the desired flavour spectrum has developed, which allows the fruit to dry and then raisin on the vine. After approximately two weeks of this process, the grapes are hand picked before being gently guided through a slow fermentation. These vine concentrated wines are made as a blending component for the single vineyard Battle of Bosworth wines, but fortunately in 2004 we made enough for this small bottling of the ‘White Boar.’

Technical Details

Picking Date: 31st March 2004

Bottling Date: 18th November 2005

pH Level: 3.8

Total Acidity: 6.3g/L

Alc/Vol: 15.9%