Shiraz 2014
Tasting Notes
You will find dark red fruits on the nose as well as fresh AND smoked meat. This last descriptor may not appeal to non-meat eaters. This wine is plush, but this plushness is wrapped around a fine structure and is flooded with flavour. It’s an all-round very stylish wine.
Vintage
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, not like the mad rush of 2013. Every vintage is different; truism of our time, and of our industry
Winemaking
Traditionally the Battle of Bosworth Shiraz is a crowd-pleasing style of wine; always delicious, ripe but not over-ripe and always faithful to region and site. The 2014 is no exception. Winemaking is fairly standard. We pick, crush and then ferment in open vessels and pump over the juice at least 3 times a day. This helps extract the maximum fruit characters and colour from the skins. The wine finishes its ferment in barrels – of various ages and types. We use predominantly French oak barrels with a smattering of American. We also blend a small percentage of cordon cut, vine dried Shiraz to the wine prior to bottling. It really is that simple.
Reviews
Ray Jordan in the West Australian's Top 100 Red Wines July 2016
Outstanding producer from McLaren Vale where they do everything as naturally as possible with organically grown fruit. This is a perfect example of capturing the essence of teh vineyard. Dusty and savoury, with a real sense of place.
93/100
Other Vintages
Technical Details
Vineyards: 'The Hill', Braden's and Chanticleer
Picking Date: 28th Feb, 7th March, 13th March and 17th March 2014
Alc/Vol: 14.5%
Bottling Date: 27rd July 2015