Awards and Accolades:

96 Points, Special Value Wine - James Halliday, Australian Wine Companion
"Deep crimson; continuing a line of distinguished wines at bargain basement prices, it is elegant, full of life, and brings together a stream of juicy black cherry fruit, balanced and integrated tannins, and some cleverly handled oak inputs. It is particularly exceptional value."

2014 Vintage: GOLD - Royal Adelaide Wine Show 2016

2014 Vintage: 93 Points - Campbell Mattinson, Australian Wine Companion
"A neat package of texture and dark fruit flavour. It rolls smoothly along the tongue, giving up blackberry, gunmetal and dark chocolate flavour as it goes. Still very young; gangly tannin will become more supple and assured as it settles. Not a foot wrong for either quality or value."

From the Winery

A relatively mild, warm winter resulted in an early budburst to kick-start the growing season. This was followed by some relatively wild spring weather however with wet, windy conditions affecting fruit set and resulting in low yields across most varieties in the region. Beautiful, warm weather returned in summer which saw flavour ripening accelerate quickly, bringing about our earliest vintage on record. A lack of Marri blossom leading up to and during harvest meant bird pressure was extreme, with netting absolutely vital this season. The early start to the season ensured all of the red varieties were able to be harvested at optimum maturity offering a great opportunity to produce a fortified wine. Fruit for this blend was entirely Estate grown on our Boodjudup and Stevens Road vineyards in the Wallcliffe sub-region of Margaret River.

The fruit was destemmed and then crushed with open rollers to introduce whole berries into the ferment. The core component was fermented in static fermenters at 26oC for 6 days. One portion, which made up 35% of the blend, was pressed early and finished fermentation in predominantly new French oak. After fermentation, the various batches underwent MLF and 14 months maturation in a selection of fine French oak barriques (35% new oak in total) prior to assembling the blend and bottling.