‘Nature’ Tempranillo Malvasia Shiraz

This was always my favourite wine from a difficult low yielding vintage. The wine is the product of an attempt to produce a wine with zero additions in the winery. The wine also demonstrates learnings from our long history of working with Grenache. The estate grown Grenache was harvested from some of the oldest vines in Western Australia. 2016 was a difficult vintage, resulting in the early harvest of the variety in an attempt to maintain freshness. Tempranillo and Malvasia were purchased from a nearby vineyard that I had recently discovered. These two varieties had been grafted onto very old Shiraz rootstock, over a soil type that is very similar to our estate vineyard. This gave us the confidence that this unusual blend would be synergistic. Previous Grenache-based wines were produced in the Burgundian method – cold soak, some whole bunches etc. This time around, we made a conscious effort to get the primary fermentation going as quickly as possible, so as not to extract the woodier notes that our estate vineyard can sometimes produce. This was achieved by crushing all three varieties together and inoculating the must with a pied du cuvee – a foot stomped bucket of grapes that I had harvested a week earlier. The wine was pressed off skins after only five days and fermentation finished in french oak puncheons.