GRENACHE SHIRAZ MOURVÈDRE 2019

Colour: Deep garnet

Aroma: An initially savoury bouquet of spice, aniseed, walnut, woody herbs, and dark couverture, evolves into ripe plum, bramble fruits and fleshy dark cherry.

Palate: The lively palate holds mouth-filling flavours of red and dark fruit offset with subtle oak spice and savoury characters. The finely structured palate is long and evolving, with supporting acidity and persistent tannins offering approachability now or the potential for shorter-term cellaring.

Closure: Diam

Grenache Noir, Shiraz and Mourvèdre were planted in 2009 to our “Rhône Block”, which has a slight north/northwest facing slope. All dry-grown varietals were hand-harvested upon reaching phenolic ripeness, and cropped at 1.8 tonnes to the acre. A tiny quantity of Muscat of Alexandria was also handpicked to co-ferment with the Grenache Noir. Grenache-Muscat (50%-1%), Shiraz (26%) and Mourvèdre (23%) were all fermented separately in open top stainless steel vats with a mix of wild and cultured yeasts. The mixed vats of crushed and whole-berry included a small portion of ripe-stalks, returned to build savoury complexity and attractive spice through primary fermentation. Selected vats were then left on skins for extended maceration, total time on skins being up to 30 days. Once basket-pressed, the separate varietal batches were directly transferred to barrel (gravity-fed) for spontaneous MLF and maturation. The wine was aged in second fill and older French oak barriques over 22 months, during which components were racked twice for clarification and assembly. Once integrated, the GSM blend was bottled without fining or filtration (DIAM closure).