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S.C. Pannell

2022

Sunrise 99

Grenache   |   McLaren Vale - Australia
Shelf Talker Spec Sheet Wine Label Bottle Image

About

In 2022, the heavens seemed to linger over Blewitt Springs a little longer than usual, granting this ancient patch of Grenache — planted in 1920 and just entering its 99th harvest — a patient and cool season, giving small berries with near-perfect ripeness and composure. From deep beneath the ancient sands of the Little Branch’s Block 5 vineyard, these old bush vines speak in a dialect all their own. Steve tends the vines with the intimacy of a vigneron who has pruned each arm by hand, answered the fruit not with technique but with trust — allowing the wine to emerge unforced, seamless and alive, carried gently through old oak and time alone. The result is a Grenache of haunting silk and profound resonance, a representation of power with bridled restraint, understated elegance while commanding attention – a first release that feels nothing like a debut.

The fruit was hand-harvested in the coolest part of the early morning and fermented without any additions with roughly 20% of the bunches left intact and the rest fully destemmed. Fermentation occurred over two weeks with gentle pumpovers and the wine was basket pressed to one single, old, 18hL French foudre for aging. After 14 months the wine was settled naturally in tank and bottled without fining or filtration and only a small addition of sulfur.

Stats

  • Grapes: 100% Grenache
  • Vineyard: Little Branch Vineyard - Block 5 (Blewitt Springs)
  • Vine Age: 103-years-old
  • Soil Type: Maslin sand flecked with ironstone over iron-riddled red clay
  • Viticulture: Practicing organic – dry-farmed
  • Fermentation: Native – open-top stainless-steel fermenter (20% whole-cluster)
  • Skin Contact: 14 days
  • Aging: 14 months in a neutral 18hL French foudre
  • Alcohol: 14.5%
  • pH: 3.33
  • Total Acidity: 6.5 g/L
  • Total SO2: 61 ppm
  • Total Production: 200 cases
  • SRP: $$224.99

Tasting Note

It arrives with the strange authority of a wine that has always existed and yet is in its first vintage: roses after rain, licorice root, cumin, coffee, Turkish delight, ironstone, tobacco leaf, sea spray, crushed stone, and the haunting sweetness of raspberries and luxardo cherries suspended between earth and air. It moves not with weight but with inevitability—silken yet tensile, profound yet feathered—its flavors unfurling in slow concentric rings. One feels not merely the triumph of a great site, but the culmination of a relentless pursuit of the definition of Grenache. A wine of such poise, clarity, and inner radiance that language falters somewhere far behind it.

Press & Reviews

The Wine Advocate

100

"The Sunrise vineyard was planted in 1920. The wine here is silky and seamless, packed with tannin, flavor and perfume. "I didn't make it any differently [than the other Grenaches]; I've just let the vineyard sing," he said. And sing, it does. This is a wholly complex, complete and persistently long wine. There are notes of Boscobel rose, sweet licorice, graphite, ironstone and tobacco. What a wine. In terms of character, this combines the texture and complexity of the Smart vineyard and the ethereal spice and delicacy of the Little Branch and then raises the bar of both to a whole new level. The release of this Sunrise Grenache marks the arrival of an "off-leash Pannell"; he has been tirelessly championing premium Grenache from McLaren Vale for years in his own oeuvre of structure, shape, tannin and freshness. The acquisition of this vineyard site has given him all the permission he needed, it seems. In many ways, it feels as if all of the Grenache that Pannell has made over the decades has been leading up to this point. It was worth the wait. And there are great things to come in future releases too."
- Erin Larkin

Producer


S.C. Pannell

Region


McLaren Vale

Country


Australia

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