Tasting note
Appearance: deep and vibrant red/purple, with purple notes. The colour is extraordinarily dense, and full of vibrance.
Aroma: plums, mulberries, poached strawberries, red fruits, lifted cherry notes, spice and dark chocolate. An engaging and enticing array of aromatics that is very hard to put down.
Palate: generous and soft, with bright fresh flavours. The flavours are surprisingly complex as they evolve from one to another. There is great length of flavour and texture, and abundant, but soft, juicy tannins. This wine drinks fantastically now, and will for some years.
Food ideas: slow cooked pulled pork with braised vegetables, roast duck breast, grilled tuna, while you are waiting for the bbq to warm up, and camembert on crackers.
Drink: Now and over the next 12 years.
Technical note
Vineyard: Sourced from a few vineyards in the centre and south of Margaret River. The vineyards on the centre of the region give riper, more generous fruit characters, while the southern vineyards lend and almost Rhone austerity, while still retaining lovely aromatics
The 2020 season: Amongst the turmoil of 2020, Margaret River had a very strong vintage. A warm and dry Summer led to the perfect ripening conditions, with no disease threats. Good Marri blossom kept the birds at bay. The whites were all picked before a 35 mm of rain event in late February. This rain worked as a bit of a pick me up for the reds. Crops, however, were quite low. The resultant red wines are intense and flavoursome, with pure fruit characters, good volume and great texture. Another great year for Margaret River.
Blend: 60% Shiraz, 37% Grenache, 3% Viognier.
Winemaking: The grapes were allowed to ripen to fully showcase their ripe varietal characters. These grapes were hand harvested from the 4th March to the 24th of March (down south).
The Shiraz was crushed and destemmed to open fermenters. The Grenache was just thrown into an open fermenter as whole bunches without crushing. The ferments were plunged three times per day (Grenache foot stomped). There was no temperature control.
At about 6 be (mid ferment), the Shiraz was pressed, and allowed to finish ferment in old barrels. This allows the extraction of the colour and flavours from the skins, but avoids the harder extraction from the higher alcohol levels generated at the end of the ferment. The Grenache was allowed to complete fermentation on skins - the foot stomping would progressively break open berries, and release the sugars for fermentation. As such, the fermentation was long and gentle, resulting in a beautifully perfumed wine. Once fermentation was finished - about 3 weeks - the wine was pressed, and moved to barrel and 2 amphorae.
Mlf for both varieties was allowed to occur in these vessels. The wine remained in these barrels and amphorae for 10 months, and then blended.
The chosen oak was old barriques (older than 5 years), and 3 ex Cognac puncheons (older than 20 years, with Cognac being their last fill).
The wine was minimally fined, filtered and bottled.
Total production of 320 cases.
Wine Analysis
Alcohol: 14.5 % vol. Standard Drinks: 8.6 pH: 3.60 Acidity: 5.67 Residual Sugar: < 0.5g.lt
Please note some wines orders may take 2-5 days to prepare for shipment.
