(2021) A combination of 70% Gin Gin clone, along with Davis and Bernard clones for this wine, fermentation partly with wild yeast, in Burgundian-coopered barriques, where it aged for 10 months, 35% new, with no malolactic. Lovely crushed almond and oatmeal, quite subtle oak, but it marks this wine with a touch of buttery softness, creamy and feels like a touch of background flint, even talcum notes. Lovely fruit on the palate, with very juicy and ripe pear, a sweetly-fruity tangerine quality too, then a much more incisive lemon zest and grapefruit acidity, touching on salts, a little nuttiness from the oak adds to a balanced finish.
(2021) Fruit from the cooler-climate valley, San Antonio and the Lo Abarca sub-zone only five kilometres from the ocean. This spends 24 months in oak, 35% new and is very much Syrah rather than Shiraz, on the cool, more herbal, Northen Rhône spectrum with only 12% alcohol. Winemaker Felipe Marin, son of the founder, describes the landscape as 'radical' with management of the vineyards necessary on an almost block by block basis - different soils, aspects and micro-climates. This from a granite block. Very much on the herbal and undergrowth spectrum, there's a hint of cocoa and darker fruit, but that herbal quality of curry leaf and bay is fascinating. There is really notable acidity on the palate - again that granitic crunch - but the svelte, compact fruit and tannins, and the juiciness of the acidity, really is lovely. Striking.
(2020) There's 269g/l of residual sugar in this wine, where the average age of barrels in the blend is seven years, and vines are aged from 15 to 100 years old. Aged in a variety of oak, ranging in size from 220-litre barrels to 5,500-litre casks - some of the casks 100 years old. Considerably darker than the Cambells Classic, and darker aromatically too, with polished wood, dark winter spices, and more shellac, prune and raisin characters. In the mouth this is super-slick and thick, positively glycerine rich, with a darker, apparantly drier profile, but such intensity, such depth and richness of flavour, edged with dark and dusty cocoa into a very long finish.
