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Intoxicating and ethereal. Allow this wine to develop slowly in your glass and watch as the earthen and woody spiced nose unfurls to reveal sweet plummy fruits, supported with highlights of cardamom, nutmeg and cinnamon. A recognisable undercurrent of game and cured meats, ties the link between this vintage and previous ones. The palate, whilst rich and juicy with its abundance of plums and mulberries, displays an ample volume of textured, velvety tannins which tame the mid palate creaminess ensuring a long, savoury finish.
Wine Description
The Story
Most of McLaren Vale's acclaimed and historic vineyards are impregnated with ancient, decomposed laterite granite known as ironstone. Its extraordinary rusty redbrown colour is derived from the iron oxides present in the stone. The larger pieces were cleared from the vineyards in the late 1880's and utilised in many of the buildings at d'Arenberg, most notably the old stables.
This wine is extremely alluring. The intriguing nose is at once both fresh and complex. Blood orange, black cherry, and dark fruits leap out of the glass. Behind them lurk complex notes of sooty earth, game, and charcuterie. Baking spices make themselves known and there is a ferrous-like aroma of fresh blood which flows through onto the palate. Here the wine starts building layers of flavour. Initially red berries, brooding mulberry, and plummy sweet fruit flood the tongue. This is followed with finely balanced, savoury mid-palate weight, accentuated by spicy minerality. A very subtle hint of lightly toasted oak is supported and carried by lively fine tannins on the vibrant and lingering finish. Intoxicatingly alluring.
Small batches of grapes are gently crushed and then transferred to five tonne headed down open fermenters. These batches remain separate until final blending. Foot treading is undertaken two thirds of the way through fermentation. The wine is then basket pressed and transferred to a mixture of new and used French oak barriques to complete fermentation. The barrel ferments are aged on lees, there is no racking until final blending and no fining or filtration.
Wine Information
Great winter rains set the vines up well last year, followed by a very dry spring and summer with no heatwaves. The initial fruit development was fantastic, the first white grapes to be picked showed incredible levels of natural acidity coupled with good fruit ripeness unlike anything we've seen for a long time. Just prior to picking the first red grapes there was three days of reasonably high temperatures, which accelerated sugar ripening and meant the winery was filled in record time. A lot of the red grapes from that period are particularly rich with intense tannin and dark fruit characters - a great vintage for reds and whites alike.