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Wine Description
The Story
Mourvèdre responds best to traditional vineyard practices with dry-grown, untrellised bush vines thriving in both Europe and the Barossa Valley. Taking cuttings from the 1853 planting of the Hewitson Old Garden vineyard, the oldest Mourvèdre vines on Earth, we grew, then crafted a wine from Baby Bush vines that takes a new look at an old treasure.
Our Baby Bush vines thrived in the superb vintage of 2012 that saw a slow and even ripening period. The later maturing nature of Mourvèdre grapes meant ripening occurred in Autumnal sunny weather and the grapes benefitting from hang-time in these cooler conditions.
After hand picking and fermentation on skins, the wine completed its maturation for 16 months in the very same barrels used, when new, for Old Garden Mourvèdre. During this period the barrels experienced our innovative batonnage, where we mix the fermentation lees with the new wine by rotating our barrels on little wheels built into the racks. These methods serve to intensify flavour and complexity and offer us complete control over this process, maximizing quality.
The result is an intense wine of unique quality displaying very similar, yet youthful, flavours and characteristics of the Old Garden.
Vintage 2009
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Near-optimum rainfall over winter, followed by dry, mild conditions over spring provided a good environment for budburst and an ideal start to the growing season with canopies developing well. Climatic conditions favoured flowering and set with mild and calm weather, however there was some shatter in Shiraz across parts of the state resulting in small crops for many regions. Some early to mid-December summer rainfall was followed by conditions drying up very quickly and continuing until the end of February. Summer was hot with some extreme heat but cool conditions returned in February and March, allowing the fruit to ripen across a long harvest with balanced acidities and excellent tannin ripeness. An elegant, yet still powerful follow up to the conditions brought about in the preceding 2008 vintage |