Uffe wandered into Kuitpo metaphorically with his first go with Lagrein. This hearty red variety can take a beating and it was a very light one with Uffe’s velvet gloves. The K1 Vineyard in Kuitpo had some pretty old vine material (for this variety in Australia) and Uffe was keen to work with it. He loves the purple fruits that Lagrein shows but maintaining bright acid, even at higher alcohol levels. Working with the variety for the first time he decided to treat it the way most of his other reds get loved: early picked and a short time on skins. The name? What else would one call Lagrein that sounds cool?
The fruit was hand-harvested in mid-April, nearly a month after most of the grapes. The fruit was fully destemmed and macerated on skins for three days in one-ton fermenters prior to being pressed to old oak barrels where it finished fermentation on the gross lees. The wine was aged for six months without any disturbances and then racked to tank to settle naturally. The wine was bottled without fining or filtration and with just a small sulfur addition.