The March 1 release of Coleraine, New Zealand’s most famous red wine, marked its 35th anniversary. Designed to age not across years, but across generations, it’s an assemblage (‘assom-blarge’ if you’re struggling) of cabernet and merlot from Te Mata’s oldest vineyards in the Havelock North hills. Left for a minute or seven in the glass, it unfurls layers of complex spices and bouquet-garni notes. Boasting a core of dark boysenberry, cocoa, fruitwood smoke and florals, the tannins are expansive and muscular, yet it boasts a lovely sophisticated silhouette. This wine needs to lay down somewhere cool and dark for at least a decade, and I mean ‘at least’. Drinking this vintage any earlier, is basically committing infanticide.
Sip with: Rare eye fillet steak sometime in the 2030’s
