Single Vineyard Dry Rosé 2024

Appearance: very pale carnation pink, 

Aroma: pale pink rose florals, blood orange zest, red currant, spring wild flowers, talcum, intense and lifted

Palate: forest red berries, rich and fleshy, length and fine structural framing, long with good fruit sweetness, coupled with a dry savoury finish melding all three varieties with Riesling focus and lift.

2024 will be remembered as one of the earliest on record with our harvest all completed the day before we commenced in 2023! Warm temperatures late September and October 2023 began to warm soils and accelerated budburst, canopy growth and flowering compressing the growing season. This coupled with warm dry conditions through February and March resulted in great flavour and physiological (colour and tannin) ripening delivering a harvest four weeks ahead of average. 

We experienced heat spikes in late January and early February with some days over 40C, reducing yields and concentrating fruit. With careful canopy management, judicious irrigation strategy and removal of any substandard fruit, we were able to harvest fruit of exquisite balance and focus, offering intense aromatics, ripe flavours and powerful yet ripe tannins. A rare vintage of immediate deliciousness with a great potential for aging.

The 2024 Single Vineyard Rose was carefully blended to give fresh ripe characters, lifted aromatics, and immediate appeal; to have great fruit sweetness but a dry complex finish. The wine is a blend of 33% Shiraz for juicy deliciousness and 34% Cabernet for structural elegance, carefully crafted via the saignée method (or bleed off) where juice is taken at the crusher/destemmer to concentrate the red ferment and remove the delicate liquid before it has picked up too much colour or tannins. For the first time this year, we have blended in 33% Riesling to make this a complete expression from the estate. Crunchy pink and red berry Shiraz and Cabernet fruit is elevated by a small amount of Riesling to give floral highlights and a mineral dry palate. It is cool-fermented in a stainless steel tank at 15C with a selected aromatic yeast and rests on lees (grape and yeast solids) for two months before being bottled in June and released in July.