Winery & Vintage Info
Kay Brothers' flagship wine, handpicked from Shiraz vines planted in 1892. Long held in high esteem as one of McLaren Vale’s finest Shiraz plantings, Block 6 Shiraz continues the tradition at Kay Brothers of producing full bodied red wines that have the grace and pedigree to age for decades. Handpicked and fermented in the original open top fermenters, Block 6 Shiraz is a wine of great strength, deep complexity and amazing vibrancy.
Block 6 vineyard faces East and rows run North South with significant undulation. Vines are spur and cane pruned with the canes wrapped onto the top wire of the low-lying trellis. The present 1.5 hectares comprises a corner of red loam, some heavy clay in the middle of the block and gravelly alluvial soils on the lower side. The underlying “South Maslin Sands” geology is extremely complex, containing layers of glauconite, limestone, sandstone and siltstone.
The growing season for vintage 2019 was consistently dry across autumn, winter, spring, and summer. This ultimately kept crop levels below average. Veraison was late to commence, but came on quickly once the warm weather arrived. Despite the warm start to summer in February, we experienced mild temperatures and cold nights which allowed the vines to come back into balance after the previous months of water and wind stress. The first week of March was warm but after this, the weather pattern returned to dry, mild days and cold nights, perfect for flavour development and natural acid retention in the grape berries.
Block 6 was hand-picked from the 127 year old vines on the 6th of March 2019, producing a tiny crop of 3.91 tonnes.
The grapes were crushed, de-stemmed and plunged twice daily while spending 11 days on skins in our traditional open fermenters. The wine was then basket pressed and matured for 24 months in 40 % new French and American oak puncheons. Bottled in May 2021.
