2024 McLaren Vale Grenache ***Pre-Release***

Bright red berry and pomegranate fruit aromas, along with flowering herbs- lavender and thyme. Medium bodied with vibrancy on the palate, the wine has flavours of red and dark cherries, and a savoury backbone of earthy spice and minerals. Finishing with lingering flavours that are supported by sinewy, yet fine tannins.

The season started with a dry winter and start to spring- warm days and quite cool nights meant a slow start to shoot growth, and smaller crops in some early flowering varieties, but in mid-November the weather pattern changed to give us a lot of rain and some humidity, which helped with shoot growth and to improve crop levels, but was challenging in the vineyards to keep disease under control. In early January the rain stopped thankfully, and we had dry conditions right the way through harvest, so disease was much less of an issue than it could have been. A few short heat waves provided some challenges, but generally the wine quality is very good.

Five parcels were selected across the 3 blocks, and from were hand harvested and vinified separately. The wines were fermented in stainless steel open fermenters. Some of the parcels were fermented with some whole bunch (equalling approx. 13% whole bunch across the blended wine). Each parcel spent between 8-12 days on skins then was gently basket pressed. 70% of the wine was transferred to aged French oak puncheons post primary fermentation to undergo malolactic fermentation, the balance remained in stainless steel. The wine remained on malo lees for 10 months before being racked and blended prior to bottling.