2021 Cleo's Block Shiraz

COLOUR | Thick and dense black.

AROMA | A very strong bouquet of warm oil, incense, pipe smoke, lavender, cassis, asian spice, creosote, warm bark and fresh plum spring from the glass.

PALATE | The palate starts out flowing with an initially sweet core of boisterous and impenetrable fruits. This wine pitches high in the mid palate, and then starts to slide down the back side of the late palate. This finishes lush, concentrated and very long, with flavours of boysenberry and blackberry liqueur. The massive fruit here does fit with the under lying structure, this is quintessential Barossa Valley shiraz from the Western Ranges. With aeration, this wine really starts to evolve, more spice notes of mocha and rhubarb appear. The palate evens out and the tannins start to show a very linear and mineral edge. This wine has excellent length and will offer great pleasure for many years to come.

Our Estate vineyards Holy Grail and Branson Coach House performed brilliantly in the 2021 growing season. The medium size crop ripened slowly and perfectly, we were able to process each clone and batch separately and this gave us a large amount of blending options for our very best wines.

WINEMAKING | One small parcel from the Holy Grail vineyard was de-stemmed into 5T stainless steel fermenter. Gently pumped over 2-3 times daily, this parcel was pressed after an average time on skins of 10 days. All free run and pressings were combined in tank and was then racked off to barrel, to go through malolatic fermentation. The wine was bottled with minimum fining and no filtration.

MATURATION | 18 months in up to 50% new French oak and 2/3 year old hogsheads. Bottled in November the following vintage.

CLOSURE | Diam Cork
VOLUME | 750ml
VARIETAL | Shiraz
REGION | Barossa Valley
SUB-REGION | Seppeltsfield
ALCOHOL (% vol.) | 14.3%
VINE AGE | 10 years
ALTITUDE | 250m
AVERAGE RAINFALL | 450-500mm
SOIL | Predominantly rich red/brown clay.