Township 7 Vineyards & Winery Provenance Series Merlot 2020

Deborah Podurgiel WSET IV Candidate rated this wine as 91/100 with the following review:

A plushy in purple plum and youthful 100% Merlot from a challenging vintage, but you wouldn’t know it. Township 7's Provenance Series Merlot 2020 is enticingly fragrant with liquid dark cherry, ripe dark plum, vanilla, baking spice and savoury herb aromas; dry, medium-plus-bodied, intensely dark-fruited with layers of dark cherry, plum, savoury herbs, vanilla, cocoa, a hint of caramel and well-integrated oak spice flavours balanced with medium-plus-acidity and crunchy tannins. Tasted January 2023.

The Merlot grapes for this vintage were sourced from the winery's Blue Terrace Vineyard (Oliver) and Front Yard Vineyard (Naramata). Grapes were macerated for two to three weeks including remontage, pipeage and pulsair treatments giving the wine its rich fruit flavours and tannins. The wine was then aged in American and French oak barrels for 18 months.

The 2020 season was challenging at best, starting with a wet and cool spring and a seven-to-10-day delay on budburst. Heavy rains during flowering led to poor pollination and poor fruit set with grape yields down 20 to 30 per cent. June was humid and created the potential for disease onset for the beginning of July, but from mid-July and August, hot, dry weather assisted in the ripening of the grapes and catching up the vintage. And, of course, there was the smoke from the western United States wildfires that drifted north to the Naramata, at one point giving 134 hours of uninterrupted heavy smoke cover. Scary for potential smoke taint but also for the loss in photosynthetic capacity for the vines. And like a fairy tale ending, the blue skies returned with a warm, dry autumn. The long veraison was one of the longest several winemakers had seen, but also giving the grapes a break with a good balance between Brix and acidity for the harvest.