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Wine Description
The Story
The Story Behind The Name / Dead Arm is a vine disease caused by the fungus Eutypa Lata that randomly affects vineyards all over the world. Often vines affected are severely pruned or replanted. One half, or an ‘arm’ of the vine slowly becomes reduced to dead wood. That side may be lifeless and brittle, but the grapes on the other side, while low yielding, display amazing intensity.
The Characteristics
A classic Dead Arm in every sense of the word. The nose is brooding and alluring, earthy notes combined with dark fruits, fennel and baking spice. The longer this wine sits in the glass, the further it unfurls opening into notes of sweeter berry fruit laced with more of those soily, forest floor notes.
The palate is dense and concentrated with a plethora of fruit characters, plum, blackberry, mulberry, earth, iodine and black olive. Despite the richness and intensity of the attack and mid palate the experience surprisingly crescendos with a lick of spicy pepper, coupled with lovely, fined grained, textural tannins that seem to persist in the mouth forever. Complex, savoury and moreish!
100% McLaren Vale Shiraz
Wine Information
The Vintage Due to drought conditions not seen for decades, 2007 was the earliest start to vintage in McLaren Vale. Overall winter rainfalls were a third of what is considered normal. The dry conditions and cold spring temperatures leading up to the growing season affected the vines fruiting and canopy development, with very short shoot length. This resulted in reduced bunch and berry size and ensured high tannins.
Just as vintage was to commence McLaren Vale experienced 50mm of rain, which caused some problems with fruit splitting but essentially saved the vintage. The rain provided enough ground moisture in the final stages for the fruit to ripen in a stress free state. This resulted in grapes having concentrated flavours at lower levels of beaume ripeness with excellent levels of acidity. Yields were down approximately fifty percent for most of the premium dry grown vineyards that contribute to The Dead Arm Shiraz . This reduced yield is a contributing factor to the concentration of flavours and great tannin structure seen in 2007. Both factors that will aid in the longevity of this great Shiraz.
