Alkina is a new story of an old place and the ’23 Grenache shows that Barossa Grenache very much belongs in the same conversation with the more talked about McLaren Vale.  When Grenache veers from strictly being planted on the heavy Barossa clays that are more suited for richer examples of Shiraz, you can have a wine of elegance and with fine tannins.  Fruit for the 2023 Grenache is made up of three blocks. Block 22, planted to bush vines in 2016, is located on the east to west ridge of the property, making up 42% of the wine.  Picked in two parcels; the limestone component on March 18th and the clay component, a week later. Block 18, picked March 17th, from vines on clay and schist makes up 50% of the wine, with the remainder from Block 25.  Even though 2023 will generally go down as a cool, wet and challenging year, great work in the vineyards produced wines of freshness and purity. The healthy organic vineyard showed its resilience against mildew and other dangers and the late start to the season meant flavor and sugar ripeness dovetailed nicely. Most of the fruit came in over an intense 11 day period in late March before the weather turned cold and wet again.

Each block was hand-picked, sorted and naturally fermented in concrete tulip with 100% whole bunches. After fermenting to dryness and spending an average of 35 days on skins, the bunches were gently basket pressed back to concrete for malolactic fermentation. Each block was aged separately as well and the final blends were made after roughly eight months in concrete.  The wine rested for another month before being racked to blending tank where it settled naturally without fining and bottled without filtering and with a small addition of sulfur.