Max's Garden

Heathcote Shiraz

By visiting this page, we hope that you are either enjoying our Max’s Garden Heathcote Shiraz would like to find out more about it.

Max’s Garden exhibits a rich, earthy texture with lifted spice and a well-delineated fruit profile. This is a wine with a soft elegant framework that complements the Garden Series for its distinctiveness.

Max’s is one if the original Garden Series wines, joining the Two Hands portfolio in 2003. We have produced Max every vintage since its inception, from the same growers property in Colbinabbin.

Located to the north of the Great Dividing Range in Victoria, the Heathcote region is at elevations between 160m and 380m. The majority of soil under vine is Cambrian – red and deep with excellent water retention. These calcium-rich red soils are made up of weathered “greenstone” and are prized for their water retention capabilities. While they drain freely, enough water is held in the soil to feed the vine throughout the growing season, and there is rarely need for irrigation in Heathcote. The region’s rainfall is evenly distributed between the seasons and the climate is temperate, with cooling winds blowing from the south. Small, concentrated grapes are the result, and they make rich, concentrated wines. The soils are also notable because they impart deep intrinsic characters – almost a sense of place or terroir – to the wines.

The unique terroir of the Heathcote wine region plays a vital role to Max’s distinct style in comparison to the 5 other Shiraz’s in our Garden Series. Heathcote Shiraz wines are defined by their inky depth of colour, and deep, dark, complex fruit. Voluptuous and well balanced, acid and tannin meld together in a way that does not dominate the fruit, but gives the wine great cellaring ability.

Those orange Cambrian soils on which the vineyard is based, are the inspiration for this label’s colour.

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THE REGION & VINEYARD
SOIL
Cambrian soil and red earth over clay, rock and bluestone.
VINE AGE 21
ELEVATION 400m
AVERAGE RAINFALL 510mm
SUB-DISTRICT Colbinabbin

VINIFCATION
Fermented in a five tonne open top fermenter, with regular pump overs (2 times daily over entire ferment) to control ferment, extract colour, flavour and tannins.

Average time ‘on skins’ was 10 days before the dry free run was drained to tank and the pressings combined. The wine was then racked to barrel, where malolactic fermentation took place. Max’s Garden was bottled unfined and unfiltered.


MATURATION
Aged for 18 months in 15% in new French oak hogshead, remainder in 5 year old French oak hogsheads.

SCORES & REIVEWS

HALLIDAY WINE COMPANION 2023

“There is a deeply resonant, slightly wild-eyed, ferrous edge to the wines of Heathcote. It’s that Cambrian soil thing, you know? That character is certainly on display here, along a gorgeous plume of deep blackberry and black cherry fruit. Weighty yet slippery and flighty at first, before settling on the mid palate, all licorice and dark-chocolate comfort. Compact tannin provides ample support here.”
93 points Read on HERE