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Agricola Vintners

2022

‘Ebenezer’

Shiraz   |   Barossa Valley - Australia
Shelf Talker Spec Sheet Wine Label Bottle Image

About

Ebenezer is the home of the Hoffmann family in the Northern Barossa Valley. This is the first vintage that Callum has been able to source a small section of the Hoffmann family’s Dallwitz Old plantings in Ebenezer. In addition to that, he’s been able to maintain his allocation of grapes from the Hoffmann’s Dimchurch Home Old vineyard, which is their original property from 1857. Callum’s family has worked with the Hoffmanns for nearly three decades so Callum calls the opportunity to work with this site is a “treasured sentiment.” Callum likes to use the comparison of two of Hermitage’s best vineyards to describe the differences between his Flaxman and Ebenezer Syrahs. He likens the Flaxman wine to Les Bessards, which has the bones (think savory, aromatic, lean tannins), and the Ebenezer wine to Le Meal, which has the flesh (think darker fruits, rounder, more gliding tannins).

The grapes were all harvested by hand on various picking dates and brought back to the cellar to ferment spontaneously as whole bunches in closed stainless steel tanks. After 3-4 weeks depending on the lot, the wine was pressed off the skins and racked to old puncheons and barriques, where it remained for 12 months of aging. At this point the lots were blended, and the wine went to the bottling line without fining or filtration and just a touch of sulfur.

Stats

  • Grapes: 100% Shiraz
  • Vineyard: Hoffmann Dimchurch Home Old - Hoffman Dallwitz Old
  • Vine Age: 72-years-old (Hoffmann Dimchurch Home Old) - 112-135-years-old (Hoffmann Dallwitz Old)
  • Soil Type: Ironstone, red clay, and calcrete
  • Viticulture: Practicing organic & practicing biodynamic
  • Fermentation: Native — stainless-steel (100% whole-cluster in closed tank)
  • Skin Contact: 3-4 weeks
  • Aging: 12 months in puncheons and barriques
  • Alcohol: 14.2%
  • Total SO2: 40 ppm
  • Total Production: 164 cases
  • UPC: None

Tasting Notes

This a powerful, dense, and intense Syrah that still showcases the lighter, more vibrant side of the Barossa. The nose is full of dark, brooding black and red fruits that meld seamlessly into the palate. There is a meaty spiciness and an herbal undercurrent that extends from the mid-palate, and the tannins are grippy and tight. The finish is marked by that signature Agricola lift of acidity thanks to fine-tuned picking.

Press & Reviews

The Wine Front

95

"This is the meaty, very dark fruited one, gravelly in tannin, splashed with liquorice, meat drippings, pulverised rock minerality and lots of clove and woody spices. It feels very authoritative, concentrated, brooding and stern in a way. A weave of pulverised rock tannin shapes the wine and pulls it through the palate away from inkier, fleshy things into a long corkscrew of rocky chew and graphite-laden pucker. Deeply serious red wine, deeply complex and intense. A bold strike."

- Mike Bennie

Wine Advocate

94

"The 2022 Ebenezer Shiraz is tightly packed, bright and edgy as hell. I like it. But it may polarize; this isn't the black, midnight spectrum Ebenezer but a more coiled, thinly raked iteration, with blood and roses, asphalt and petrichor. The fruit is there; it huddles on the middle palate. The future of this wine is written in water; it flows and changes and follows the landscape. Although it presents as a wine that will drink better in the near future, it has an air of mystery about it that suggests it may also age very well, but in its own way. The future will tell. 14.2% alcohol, sealed under cork and wax."

- Erin Larkin
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Producer


Agricola Vintners

Region


Barossa Valley

Country


Australia

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