2021 - Brutal - Light Red

Light Red

Swan Valley

Zero additions

565 bottles made

We started out this vintage knowing that we wanted to make a Brutal Wine. It is interesting looking back as we had a few things in mind that could potentially become the Brutal at the start of year but as it came to tasting through the wines during our blending day there was a single barrel was just insane. After all enthusiastically enjoying a glass we unanimously decided that this one barrel would be it. It just felt right. Iterative and relying on gut feel. Not design.

So, to tell you the story of this wine we had the reverse engineer the origins of this singular barrel.

This wine mostly comes from the third pick of our Grenache on the final day of January. This fruit was then macerated on skins for 10 days and then then pressed into a 600L qvevri where it stayed for a couple of months, until Paul - our host at Swan Valley Wines - needed to use it, at which point it was racked to two puncheons, both half-filled. These puncheons were topped with direct-press-carbonically-macerated grenache that was otherwise destined for the Big Valley Bombo. One puncheon was racked clean, the other was transferred with the lees.

This wine, was the latter.

So what did we taste on that fateful blending day? Spice, rosewater, patchouli, and burnt orange on the nose, with hints of the strawberry from the carbonic maceration poking through. A full palate, bitter red cherry and olive tapenade, strung along an acid that directs but never overpowers, finishing with incredible texture from time on lees. A wine we bloody well made pretty bloody well, but perhaps didn’t intend to
make in this way.

It fits the vintage well as a Brutal should be a statement as well as a wine proclaiming loudly that you are committed to the zero/zero ethos going forward. We also had some feedback from the 2020 vintage asking us if this is how we really wanted to portray these wines – in terms of zero/zero winemaking. We think this serves as a loud and self-explanatory answer to that important question.