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Viticultural & vinification notes		Winemakers comments
Vintage conditions	Mild ripening temperatures after a moderate summer with vintage in March and April.	Colour Nose     Palate	Light straw Fragrant and fruity, hints of grass, pineapple, tropical fruit, ripe fig and straw   A mouth-filling wine with juicy, tropical fruit flavours and typical grassy Semillon lift. The wine has obvious sweetness with long flavour and a refreshing crisp acid backbone.
Vineyard	Three Hills Karridale Hand pruned to rods Hand picked
Grape variety	Semillon
Maturation	Wholly fermented in stainless steel and matured in bottle under screw cap to maintain freshness
Wine analysis	Alc/Vol: 10.2% Acidity: 7.5 g/l pH: 3.18 Residual Sugar: 2.0 Beaume by hydrometer

This wine style was formerly named Anne-Coralie after a young French winemaker who spent the 2000 vintage working at Happs. She was impressed with the quality of our Semillon and suggested that it would make a great sweet wine. The wine was made and named after her because of her enthusiasm for the style. However we now deem it necessary to change the name and denote the style and variety to assist consumers with their wine choice – hence Late Picked Semillon.

The wine is made from Semillon from our Karridale vineyard and is left longer on the vine to obtain more sugar in the grapes for residual sweetness. Thus it is said to be ‘Late Picked’. The fruit is gently pressed, settled and fermented with aromatic yeast. The fermentation is arrested when the appropriate sugar / acid balance is achieved and the wine then bottled young to retain the fresh lifted characters of the variety.

The heavily botrytis infected Semillon of Sauterne in Bordeaux, France is the benchmark instance of the usefulness of Semillon in generating a sweet wine style. In Hungary the same ‘noble rot’ infects grapes such as Furmint and Harslevelu. Wines of great interest are also produced in Austria. Infection involves a marked loss of yield and a concentration of flavour.

Late Picked Semillon may or may not be botrytis affected. The humid environment in Karridale tends to promote botrytis in all varieties, mercifully however to only a limited extent. Infected bunches finish up on the ground.