2021 Yacca Block Shiraz

COLOUR | Deep concentrated black

AROMA | A very tight bouquet of cedar, dark berry liqueur, polished timber, smoke, glazed plums, cassis, baking spice backed by violets and cigar box.

PALATE | The palate explodes from the get go, this coils up and bursts forth with flavours that smash every corner of your mouth. After time in the decanter, this wine begins to settle down, slowly showing more nuance, grace and manners. Deep blackcurrant and rich powerful fruits expand to show you the structure behind the wine, a lovely layering emerges and the tannins give you an
amazing length to a very balanced finish. This is a very interesting ride, one not for the faint hearted. As seen in all of our 2021 wines, there is an inner core and magical softness that makes this vintage just so god damn magical.

This is a big/little wine, a wine with a huge personality but with the ability not to be mono dimensional and boring. In the end, the stony and minerally edge to the tannin profile wins the day. A great hallmark of Eden Valley, it’s rare to find a Shiraz based wine the world over that has this depth and unforgivingness. Such strong, seamless and broad late palate tannins. Maybe fruit from Les Bessards cru on the hill of Hermitage in France could be seen
in a similar vein, and it’s with these amazing tannins that I have the confidence that this bottling with age and time to cellar will sit strong alongside the great 2012, 2016 and 2018 vintages of our Yacca Block. Let sleep for a few years, then enjoy.

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 | Crushed and de-stemmed on the 24th of March. Fermented in 5 tonne stainless. Time on skins 10 days, pumped over 2-3 times a day. Free run and pressings were combined into tank then racked off gross lees into oak where malolactic fermentation occurred. Bottled with minimal fining and without 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
ALCOHOL (% vol.) | 14.3%
REGION | Eden Valley
SUB-REGION | Menglers Hill
VINE AGE | 19 years
ALTITUDE | 483m
AVERAGE RAINFALL | 580mm
SOIL | Shallow, skeletal grey and loam with quartz gravel over weathered rock and yellow clay.