Winery & Vintage Info
Vintage 2021 comes after a season of renewal following a sustained period of drought. It was an ideal growing season, with modest rainfall and modest crops present as the vines bounced back to life. With Winter 2020 being warmer than average, we saw bud-burst begin a touch early. Flowering and veraison timed closer to normal. Rainfall in December and January coupled with cool, overcast days helped the fruit retain good pH and acid levels as it started to ripen. Vintage commenced with a selection of early harvesting, before a run of sustained, glorious dry and mild weather saw fruit hanging out for full flavour development. Riper Chardonnays and Semilions are looking fantastic and with abundant flavour and texture. Early Shiraz blocks ripened rapidly and had some lovely berry shrinkle before being harvested in early February, with later blocks taking a bit longer to move into the ideal flavour range. Vintage 2021 was a gentler vintage than the last few years, with fruit coming in steadily throughout January and February, wrapping up a very rewarding season for our vineyard teams. Rains through February and March helped our vines to grow fresh leaf and rebuild their reserves ahead of the 21-22 season.
The fruit for this wine is sourced from the wineries Gillards Road property and other vineyards from the Hunter Valley with the same soil type; deep hillside red/brown terra rossa of limestone parentage. The fruit is machine picked in the early hours of the morning when it has reached a good balance of sugar, flavour and acid. Once in the winery the fruit is handled oxidatively, crushed, pressed and pumped to stainless steel tanks. Once settled the clear juice is racked and then inoculated to start fermentation. When fermentation is about 1/3 through we transfer the fermenting juice to French oak barrels of varying age. Fermentation is completed in barrel and then malolactic fermentation is allowed to occur naturally (usually around 10-30%). The lees are stirred monthly. The wine is pumped out of barrel to stainless steel tanks and is then bottled 12 months prior to release.
