Nose
The nose displays a complex blend of violets and spicy black pepper notes of the Shiraz with the more savoury licorice aromas from the Tempranillo.
Palate
Shiraz and Tempranillo are wonderful partners; two old varieties coming together to make a new vibrant blend. The Shiraz brings all the Australian fruit power, deep plum flavours with a peppery edge in a fleshy fruit sweet palate. The Tempranillo adds savoury elements and complex tannin structure to the wine resulting in a more complete wine than either of the two components could make on their own. This wine has all the sweet fleshiness that we expect in Shiraz with the added benefit of textural complexity.
Growing Conditions
The vintage of 2019 in Margaret River was particularly challenging logistically and financially but in the most important sense, that is grape quality, it was nonetheless a good vintage.
At the Hay Shed Hill vineyard, which is very close to the Indian Ocean, we experienced a warm and dry winter, which meant that the vines never deeply entered dormancy as soil temperature stayed reasonably high. This led to a very early initial budburst. It is never good to burst early as spring in Wilyabrup can be quite wild with wet and windy conditions which can be devastating during the grapevine flowering period. And so it proved this season with hail, wind and heavy rain during the critical flowering period leading to the low fruit set.
The challenges remained as we entered the summer part of the growing season with several rain episodes and generally mild conditions. This made ripening slow, which is not a bad thing except that we had pressure from the two main pests in grape growing in Margaret River, birds and kangaroos. It was one of those years with no blossom in the native trees across the whole of the South West, so very little food for the birds. Similarly the dry winter severely limited the feed for kangaroos and combined with unusually big mobs the roo damage to the fruit was extensive. This was my thirteenth vintage here at Hay Shed Hill and I have never seen kangaroo numbers like this before.
The accountant would doubtless judge 2019 as a very poor year, but when you toast the vintage with a glass from 2019 you will be grateful that not all decisions are made from a financial basis.
Winemaking
Both Shiraz and Tempranillo were de-stemmed and fermented separately in open vessels with extensive pump over cap management to aid colour and flavour extraction as well as optimize the tannin development. The wines were pressed off skins and matured in French oak barriques, approximately one third new oak with the balance one and two year old. After 15 months in barrel the wines were blended according to taste.
Appearance
Vibrant red/black colour with a deep opaque centre.
