Winery & Vintage Info
The fruit for Elderton Shiraz was traditionally sourced from the Elderton vineyard situated on the banks of the North Para River, Nuriootpa, Barossa Valley, South Australia. Today, this wine includes fruit from the three exceptional estate vineyards that the Ashmead family own.
Elderton was transformed from a vineyard supplying quality fruit to other wineries to a winery in its own right in 1982, and have since won much recognition for all of the wines, especially the Shiraz. Barossa Shiraz is now highly collectable worldwide, and the Elderton is always a benchmark for the region.
The 2019 Barossa Shiraz comes from many parcels across our three vineyard sites - these vineyards ripen differently owing to their different aspects, elevation and soil types. In 2019 our Nuriootpa vineyard was hit badly by frost. Fortunately, our Greenock and Craneford vineyards escaped that frost. Our Greenock vineyard is on the western ridge of the Barossa, is first to ripen for us and always brings a vibrant bouquet and punchy tannin to the wine. Our Craneford vineyard is a more elevated site on leaner soils, ripening later in the season. 2019 was dry, with just enough winter rain for the vines to get a decent start. The growing season was dry and crop levels were low. As a result, we have only a small offering of this vintage.
"2019 presented a challenging year with small berries and intense flavour in our Shiraz. Careful cap management ensured gentle extraction from the skins and seeds, whilst avoiding harsh bitter tannins. We fortunately had sufficient Shiraz from our Craneford parcels to freshen the blend and harness the bold forward tannin profile we typically find from Greenock fruit. Post fermentation our single batches were put to a combination of new and used oak for malolactic fermentation and maturation before blending." - Jules Ashmead
