Winery & Vintage Info
On a highland farm in Scotland the collection of barns, stables and outbuildings is known as a Steading. Here in the Barossa Valley the varieties Grenache, Mataro and Shiraz all stand in their own right, however in blending, their strengths create a complex wine of solid, earthy structure. The fruit for the 2019 vintage Torbreck 'The Steading' is sourced from Grenache, Mataro and Shiraz vines that survived the worldwide phylloxera outbreak of the 1880s, and a century later, the vine-pull scheme in the Barossa in the 1980s.
The protection of this old vine resource of the Barossa Valley is central to the Torbreck story and this wine, more than any other, is an indication of what is possible from these historic cultivars.
The growing season was defined by a continuously warm to hot summer with no effective rainfall, wind and hail at flowering, and followed with three major frosts - resulting in an earlier and much smaller harvest than average. These tough conditions produced smaller clusters of intensely dark berries with thick fleshy skins contrasted against brown mature stalks. Whilst yields were down, once these vineyards were fermenting in our cellar the concentration of colour, tannin and aroma of the 2019 vintage was revealed.
