Good winter and early spring rains were followed by a generally dry and mild growing season. After the leaner vintages of 2019 and 2020 it was nice to see a return to long term average crop levels. We had a slow and steady ripening period without any excessive heat spikes which has resulted in super varietal fruit intensity and balanced natural acidity.

A Mary Poppins kind of vintage; practically perfect! Joch is always loathe to comment favourably about vintage quality, for fear of jinxing things – he can be superstitious like that, but by the end of harvest, the word ‘exceptional’ was heard to come out of his mouth.

Handle with care: is our motto with our McLaren Vale Pinot – which as you may or not know, is a rare mythical beast - we think that we make the only Pinot Noir in the Valley. Back in the day, Joch’s father Peter used to grow masses of Pinot and sell it to big companies to make sparkling base. That was before the days of Shiraz for miles. 

We have to take care not to make a big McLaren Vale dry red, so we pick early and gently destem and crush the grapes and ferment them in small open vessels. We throw in some whole bunches, too, which makes for a more delicate extraction of colour, flavour and tannins from the skins. The wine spends about 5 months in old oak barrels before bottling.

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