Large Format Bella's Garden Shiraz

Written by Two Hands Proprietor Michael Twelftree in 2022
COLOUR | Deep purple to black

AROMA | This wine shines like a diamond, beautiful smells waft from the glass. Both blue and black fruits preserve, matched with clove, violet, vanilla, liquorice and cracked pepper.

PALATE | The fruit softly emerges along the palate, where your greeted with the Barossa textural brilliance of turning from robust and pure fruits and into a long and velvety texture. This wine shows a remarkable poise for such a young wine, the aromatics are clean and all so pure. The texture really creeps up on you and the late palate has the most wonderful and soft tannins, that linger as if in suspension. There is so much to like and admire here. Barossa Valley purity in its best form, precise, persistent and defined. This bottling will be very long lived, as I see it very much in the mould of both the 2004 and 2005 vintage wines. These two vintages thathave aged slowly and still have years ahead of them. This 2021 bottling can be enjoyed now, but I have to believe its greatest reward will come from 10 years (9or 20 for a magnum!) in a cold cellar, in a word spectacular.

2021 is an extremely talented vintage, one that we will be talking about for many years to come. This form has now been franked having followed each individual bottle through maturation in our cellars and into bottle. The wines are very well balanced and have a soft and endless energy. All components of the wine work so brilliantly and synergistically together that you wonder if we will ever be able to repeat the process with mother nature on our side.

Fermented in five to ten tonne open top fermenters, with regular pump overs (twice daily over entire ferment) to control ferment, extract colour, flavour and tannins.

Average time ‘on skins’ was 7-10 days before being pressed to tank, free run and pressings combined. The wine was then racked to barrel, where malolactic fermentation took place. Bella’s Garden was bottled unfined and unfiltered.

MATURATION: Aged for 18 months in French oakhogsheads, with 15% new and the remainder in older oak 1-6 years old.

Predominately grown in the Red/Brown earth of the Barossa’s western ranges, the soil profile creates masculine tannins and richness through the palate. Lower yield limiting soils provide a large fruit concentration. This label’s colour reflects the red soils of the Barossa’s western ranges where all the best Two Hands vineyards are located.

Soil | Predominantly rich red/brown clay.
Vine age | 17-41 years
Elevation | 200-320m
Average rainfall | 450-500mm
Sub district | Ebenezer, Gomersal, Greenock, Kalimna, Marananga, Moppa Hills, Seppeltsfield, Stockwell, Stonewell.

95 Points - Wine Advocate"The 2021 Bella's Garden Shiraz is from the Barossa Valley and, like last vintage, shows all the earth and might of the Barossa dirt. It has red earth, licorice, iodine, blood, layers of mulberry and blackberry and metal shavings. Interestingly, it is sedate on the palate but very long. This suggests it might need a decant or, at the very least, might benefit from one. It is a lovely wine that is big, buxom, dense and persistent. I really love the finish—it is chewy and full, very satisfying. 14.4% alcohol, sealed under Diam." - Robert Parker