Vintage 2014 was a season of extremes for us all in McLaren Vale. We had great winter rains which gave us a full soil moisture profile in time for a dry and windy spring. They don’t call it windy Willunga for nothing. If we’d had a set of wind chimes on the property, we would have heard them all day and night from September to January. We had a series of very hot days in January, followed by about 45mm of rain over a 48 period in early February which slowed ripening of our red grapes right down. We had picked all of our white grapes prior to the rain ‘event’ and so we had a decent break between whites and reds, like the good old days. There was no splitting of any of the grapes left on the vine after the rain, mercifully, either. Joch’s analysis of 2014 is that it was a gentleman’s vintage – everything came in slowly and in order.

Scarce Earth is a McLaren Vale initiative exploring and celebrating the geological climatic and soil diversity of the region. All wines come from a single block, a small plot of land with a unique flavour profile and personality.

The 2014 Chanticleer Shiraz is made using Shiraz grapes from our Chanticleer Vineyard. It has been hand-made, hand bottled and is unfiltered. The wine was open fermented then spent no time in oak to allow the expression of the vineyard in its purest form.

Soil Type:          Urrbrae stony loam

Geology:           Christies Beach formation, Quaternary period

Elevation:          138 metres

Vine Age:          31 years

Vine clone:        1127 clone

Volume:              33 dozen

• The Wine Front June 2016 Mike Bennie

  Sourced from Strout Road, Willunga on the Christies Beach Formation of soils.

  Ripe, strawberry and raspberry jammy notes, some sweet cherry pie whiffs, sniffs of liquorice, fennel. Slippery, smooth, ripe fruited and cool in the palate, long in flavour, lightly spicy, luscious and elegant mouthful of fruit. Shows some fine, silty tannin, zesty acid to finish distracts a touch. Still, a very smooth ride.

  Rated : 92 Points
  Tasted : Jun-16

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