Plantagenet's Great Southern Shiraz

Shiraz in the Great Southern is known for producing wines with a complex mix of spicy, peppery and aniseed characters combined with strong berry fruit, blueberry and raspberry characters, and some brambly/earthy notes to finish. Our belief is that generally our extremes in diurnal temperatures through out the growing season (we can still have cold nights all throughout summer) contribute to the spicy/peppery characters and the finer palate structure, and that the heat during the day through February and March contributes to wonderful berry fruit characters.

We wait until those facets of the fruit can be seen in the grapes before we pick. The grapes are fermented in stainless steel vats, which include both closed and open fermenters (the latter for small batch processing). We employ a regime of pump overs and delestage for the closed fermenters and plunging and pump overs for our open fermenters. We like our ferments to start off warm (28 degrees celcius) and finish about 20 degrees celcius which minimizes any over phenolics or bitterness.

Maturation and MLF take place in French Oak, which is comprised of 35% New Oak from selected cooperages including Francois Frere and Sylvain. Maturation is usually around 16 - 18 months. A rigorous blending regime is employed to get the best wine possible, followed by minimal fining and filtration before bottling.