‘K’ Sands’

‘K’Sands’ is a masterpiece from one of the world’s oldest vineyard plantings. This is the second year of this wine in the Agricola portfolio, and it comes from the Asbroek family’s ‘Ancient’ Shiraz vineyard planted in 1864 on Kalimna Road West, as well as a small portion planted in 1970. The Asbroek family has been farming the old block for three generations. There is a certain paradox at play here, as one of Australia’s youngest winemakers crafts something entirely new from some of the Barossa’s oldest raw materials. Callum was born and raised in the Barossa, and his goal has always been to tell the story of his provenance through wine. He does so not with broad brush strokes, but with a deft hand, letting the variety remain constant as the place becomes the critical variable. The 2023 vintage was a significantly cool, prolonged harvest; many of Callum’s sites were picked two weeks later than usual. This long and cool season resulted in considerable structural backbones of these wines, while still maintaining vibrant perfumes and flavor profiles. Sadly, Callum was asked “by a business far larger than [his]” to remove the local place name and indigenous word ‘Kalimna’ from his labels. This wine is now named K’ Sands and is still a bottling of the Asbroek’s treasured vines behind their family home.

The Shiraz grapes were hand harvested and placed as intact clusters in a closed stainless steel tank. The juice fermented over the course of three to four weeks, after which the wine was racked to used puncheons and barriques where it remained for 12-14 months. The wine was bottled without fining or filtration, and it received just a small dosage of sulfur.