The truly wondrous thing about wine is that speaks of where it comes from. All true wine has a local accent – something distinct and unmistakable that helps you place it in an instant. This old vine Grenache Shiraz is a wine of place and it couldn’t come from anywhere else but ‘The Vale’. The blend is something altogether more than the sum of its two parts – it is the McLaren Vale in essence. The Shiraz comes from Steve’s Koomilya Vineyard in Upper Tintarra, while the Grenache comes from a 50-year-old Alderney vineyard in Seaview. The 2019 season was a winemaker’s vintage with every scrap of experience tested and measured. Lower than average winter rainfall set up for a dry growing season resulting in dramatically reduced yields, which improved acidity. The resulting wines will, as a result, have long lives.
Both varieties were hand-harvested and co-fermented without any additions in open-top stainless-steel tanks. Around one-quarter of the fruit was kept intact and manual hand plunging was used for optimum extraction. After 10 days on the skins and stems, the lot was pressed to old, 2300L French oak vats for maturation. Following 15 months on the fine lees, the barrels were racked to tank and the wine was bottled without fining or filtration and with a small dose of sulfur.