Winery & Vintage Info
The idea for an early-release, low-sulphur, unfiltered Grenache had been bubbling away for a few years and in 2017 access to the right fruit from a dry-grown vineyard, sparked the Basso project into life. From the Latin Bassus, meaning low, Basso is low in additions and speaks clearly of the place from which it comes.
Lighter, warm-climate red wines based on Grenache particularly from McLaren Vale have a growing place on the tables of Australian diners. Youthful and flavoursome wines that match where and how we live and the food we love to make and eat.
How best to describe a vintage in a pandemic? Problematic. A dry start to the season with lower than expected winter and spring rainfall followed by a day of intense heat right on flowering lead to some early anxiety around yields. Fires and the devastation they bring struck around Christmas and many of our growers losing the livelihoods weighed heavy as we went into vintage. Thankfully the days got cooler sooner than anticipated allowing long even ripening. A year to remember and be thankful.
Harvested at 13.7 Baume, fermented in open top fermenters with daily pump overs, 10 days on skins before gentle pressing, malolactic fermentation followed by maturation in large French oak vats. Racked twice and sent to bottle without filtration on the 8th of February 2021, 24,000 bottles produced.
