• French oak
• Ripe raspberries
• Florals & spice
• Bright acidity

Deep red with purple hues. Ripe raspberries, plums and fragrant floral characters laced with hints of white pepper and subtle brambly notes. Medium-full bodied, offering plenty of inky forest fruits such as blackberries and redcurrants, with underlying savoury/spicy elements. The bright acidity and fine tannins combine to produce a succulent wine, crunchy and vibrant, with a wonderful persistence of flavour. Vibrant and eminently drinkable in its youth, this finely structured wine will also benefit from further bottle maturation and will reward short to medium term cellaring.

Fruit for this blend was predominantly Estate grown on our Stevens Road and Boodjidup vineyard in the Wallcliffe sub-region of Margaret River.

We had a great summer leading up to vintage, although a rain event about a week or so before the start of harvest lead to some unusually humid conditions (for Margaret River at least). Careful fruit selection in some vineyards was required as a result of the humidity, despite experiencing good weather during the white harvest. The end of the whites saw a bit more rain, which was then followed by fine weather for the rest of March setting up the reds nicely. In summary 2021 was a more challenging season than usual, however the extra work in the vineyard ultimately paid dividends with some wonderfully elegant wines being produced.

There were three core components to the blend, each made using quite different winemaking techniques to bring a mixture of whole bunch fragrance, barrel ferment texture as well as purity of fruit to the final blend. 25% of the blend was destemmed and then crushed with open rollers before being pressed early and barrel fermented in French oak barriques, half of which was new oak. After fermentation this component was matured in a large format (2000 litre), old oak vat. 25% of the blend was fermented with whole bunches included in open fermenters, with gentle extraction and pressing followed by maturation in a large format oak vat also. The final 50% of the blend was treated more ‘conventionally’. The fruit was destemmed and then crushed with open rollers to introduce whole berries into the ferment which was carried out in static fermenters at 25oC for 6 days. This also included the inclusion of a small about of Viognier for co-fermentation. The batch was then matured in French oak barriques (20% new) after pressing. The total maturation time in oak for all wines was 14 months.