Nero d'Avola is Sicily's most popular red grape (and the island's most planted one) and is characterised by flavours of ripe black plums, intense blue fruit and licorice like aromas. It is rare to find good Nero d’Avola elsewhere but this new Australian rendition is convincingly Mediterranean like in style. Full bodied, black in colour and beautifully complex in taste.

TASTING NOTE 

Vibrant ruby red colour. with purple hues. Lifted aroma of redcurrants, cranberry, violet florals, leather and spice, hints of olive and chocolate flecks. It is young and a little brooding, slightly restrained, yet delicate.  A juicy and textural front palate is followed by plum, mouthcoating gravelly tannin that drives the length of the wine and mulberries dominating the mid palate. The wine opens up beautifully with time in the glass. A hint of savouriness and graphite bring yet more complexity. Made in a playful but serious style that suits a wide range of dishes or perfect on Its own. 

VINEYARD 

Cabernet Franc for this wine was sourced from 1988 plantings in the Isolation Ridge vineyard at Frankland Estate. The vineyard sits on an undulating northern and eastern facing slope on ancient duplex soils of ironstone gravel and loam over a clay sub-soil. It is certified organic farmed since 2009 and this is reflected in the depth and concentration of fruit flavours. The vines are trained on a Vertical Shoot Position (VSP) trellis system to enhance sunlight penetration of the canopy and optimize ripening conditions.  Cabernet Franc plays a huge role in our vineyard being the main component of our Olmos Reward, we find it suits our vineyard and region the best out of the Bordeaux varieties.

VINIFICATION 

Fruit was harvested in ideal conditions and fermented in shallow stainless steel open fermenters. The fruit is hand plunged to gently extract the tannin, keep the ferment as even as possible and maintain fruit purity. The wine is pressed off and aged on lees in 500L French oak puncheons and 1500L foudre for 10 months before bottling

If you're a fan of a big red, try this one out for size and you'll soon be back for more. It's made by Australian winemaker Johnny Quarisa, who may have an Italian background but he rocks a definite Argentinian vibe in this deliciously dry, dark and juicy Malbec. It's made from grapes grown in South Australia, a region better known for Shiraz, which also fits the big dark juicy red style. 

This is an outstanding, velvety red which totally over delivers. Long, smooth and delicious.

Aglianico is one of the most commanding red grapes and powerful red wines traditionally found in the south of Italy - and here's an interestingly delicious version made in Australia. This wine was fermented and aged in 800 litre Tuscan hand made amphora for 11 months. The aromas and flavours here span the gamut of blueberries and spice in a full bodied wine with staunch tannins held in great balance with this wine's fresh acidity which cuts through the backbone of the wine, adding tension and length. 

Production was 1333 bottles.

Winery notes (2021 Vintage)
"Organically grown and made. Vibrant cherry red in colour. Fresh lifted young berries, early season plums, dried herbs and savoury olive characters give a wine of amazing perfume. It’s bold and lush on the palate. Lovely cherry and chocolate characters interact with fine gravelly tannins, salty liquorice flavours and a sweet core of fruit. This leads to a wine of balance with a bright crisp finish. Touriga Nacional as a variety offers good cellaring potential, will be good to see where this goes In a few years.

Fruit was harvested in ideal conditions and fermented in shallow stainless steel open fermenters. The fruit is hand plunged to gently extract the tannin, keep the ferment as even as possible and maintain fruit purity. The wine is pressed off and aged on lees in older 500L French oak puncheons for 10 months. Unfiltered and unfined It goes to bottle."

We can't think of a better variety for our future than this southern Italian rustic beauty. Lovely big late-ripening bunches with plenty of natural acid and earthy tannin, personality plus! It provides us with a savoury and refreshingly drying, delicious food-friendly red, made for the table. Regeneratively grown from grass to glass, the old world in new hands.

Cloud Cuckoo Land is an imaginary state of absurd over optimism – something that we at Wild & Wilder are often accused of. Indeed, not so long ago, if we’d said that we wanted to make high quality, low intervention wines made from Mediterranean varieties in the Riverland, Cloud Cuckoo land is exactly where people would have said that we lived! But, we believe that anything is possible if you don’t see the obstacles, you challenge the “received wisdom” and resist the naysayers. Cloud Cuckoo Land is for everyone who feels the same.

47% Nero D’Avola, 22% Montepulciano, 17% Aglianico, 14% Grenache

Jammy with generous fruit sweetness.

Melee from Paulmara Estates is a red wine from the Barossa Valley, South Australia. made with a blend of Sangiovese, Shiraz, and Malbec, with a 75%, 20%, and 5% ratio respectively.

This wine offers a variety of fine spices including mint, dried herbs and cedar on the nose which lead to a palate of sweet red fruits  - plum, wild strawberry and blueberry, bolstered with powdery tannins. The Sangiovese provides a fresh acid line, while the Shiraz provides ripe fruit density and richness. The Malbec provides floral notes and red and blue fruits

A very interesting story is what started Teusner Wines. After overhearing a couple of grape growers, in their local pub, who were going to be ripping out their 85 year old Grenache vines Kym Teusner and Mick Page offered them four times what they were going to be paid by the ‘big guys’ for the crop. Over the years, Kym and Mick have worked with a number of growers to gain access to a range of old vines in the Barossa Valley. The one thing that hasn’t changed is Kym, Mick and their passion to make the absolute best of the old Barossa Valley vineyards wines.

The wonderful world of wine gives us around 60 or more synonyms for one of our favourite varieties, Mataro, well-known ones such as Mourvedre and Monastrell, lesser known ones such as Balzac and Exparte. We love the mutts at Teusner (dogs can sometimes out-number humans!)… it’s somewhat ironic then that we chose this particular name for Mataro…Estrangle Chien in France …The Dog Strangler in the Barossa.

There’s plenty of dark plum, mulberry fruits and five spice character on this Dog’s nose. Rich, savoury and spicy on the palate…all the stuff that makes us love this variety in abundance.

Bold, rich and dry with powerfully fruity aromas and depths of deliciousness. This wine is a super intensely purple hued red made from Alicante Bouchet, a red fleshed grape, which ripens to surprisingly low sugar levels and lends itself to having a modest level of alcohol with stacks of flavour intensity. Alicante is a cross of Petit Bouschet (itself a cross of Teinturier du Cher and Aramon) with Grenache. It makes wine that tastes of cherries and spice.

We love the interesting different take on light red vs rose that this wine offers. A must try in summer. Serve chilled.

Rockford Wines' legacy

Rockford Wines is an icon itself and a relatively new one, established in 1971 by Robert O'Callaghan, who has forged a reputation for preserving winemaking tradition and saving many of the world's oldest grape vines from being pulled up in the Australian Government's vine pull schemes of the 1970s and 1980s.

The Rockford vintage shed houses equipment from 50 to 100 years ago, which was discarded by other wineries as modernisation took over.

Spanish inspired, Australian made Tempranillo from the adventurous Chaffey Bros brand. This dry Aussie red is smooth, soft textured and tastes of ripe fruit flavours of red and dark plums, stewed and dried. It's made from two vineyards in the Barossa Valley, South Australia, one of them with 70+ years of vine age, which comes through in this wine's superb concentration of flavour - older vines are thought to deliver richer flavours. 

The inspiration for La Conquista comes from Spain's most famous red wine, Rioja, which is usually a blend. This is also a blend and uses the same grapes as found in Rioja - namely, Tempranillo with Grenache and Graciano (from the cooler Eden Valley) for support. 

The wine is named after the 1811 Battle of the Barrosa in Cadíz.

Pirrimimma was the first winery in Australia to grow the thick skinned Petit Verdot grape.

It's renowned for being an early budding, late ripening red grape with thick skins and powerful depth of colour, flavour and weight. This late ripening dark skinned grape is originally thought to come from Bordeaux in south west France where it can often struggle to ripen fully, hence it is most commonly used as a blending component to add depth to wines made from Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Ironically, it ripens best when it is least needed, as Master of Wine Jancis Robinson writes in the bible of grape varieties, Wine Grapes. 

In the warmest, driest best years, all of the grapes that struggle to ripen (Cabernets and Petit Verdot in particular) all tend to ripen well. Another good reason for seeking out good quality Bordeaux in dry vintages.

Which leads us to the Southern Hemisphere and to South Australia where Pirramimma Wines is based and this lovely red comes from.