Tait ‘The Ball Buster’ 2013
Color: Deep Black Purple. Nose: Intense aromas of blackcurrent, Stewed plums, Cherry, and chocolate. Palate: Full bodied berry palate with a sweet long lasting finish.
91 pts Tanzer/Vinous
Vivid purple. Heady, smoke-accented aromas of black and blue fruit preserves, incense and fruitcake, with a sexy floral topnote. Juicy dark fruit, cola and floral pastille flavors pick up a sweet note of mocha with aeration. Fleshy but focused and energetic, finishing with noteworthy power and smooth, slow-building tannins. Very suave and approachable right now. — Josh Raynolds
89-91 pts Robert Parkers The Wine Advocate (Lisa Perroti-Brown)
A blend of 75% Shiraz, 13% Merlot, 12% Cabernet Sauvignon, the deep garnet-purple colored 2013 The Ball Buster Proprietary Red is set to be bottled in December. It opens to lovely notes of cassis, bay leaves, red plums and black cherries with pencil lead, cloves and baking spice accents. The palate has lovely grainy tannins, nice freshness and a long finish. Offering a lot of character at a very modest price, this vintage promises to live-up to its outstanding quality standard!
The grapes that make up the Ball Buster blend are sourced from different vineyard locations throughout the Barossa. Vineyard sites are chosen to ensure that the resultant fruit is intense and that cropping levels do not exceed 3.5 tones an acre; typically these are clay soils on the fringes of the Barossa. Each vineyard site is visited twice a week during the maturing season to ensure that the fruit is maturing slowly and that water is only applied when necessary. Picking is only done when the grapes are physiologically ripe. The age of the vineyards that make up the 2012 Ball Buster Blend vary between 7 and 40 years.
All grapes are picked when physiologically ripe to obtain peak ripeness in terms of sugar and flavor. The grapes are de-stemmed into open fermenters, pH is adjusted and fermentation takes place over 7-10 days at a temperature of approx 24 degrees centigrade. Plunging and or pumping over takes place 3 times a day. The wine is then pressed using a Basket Press. Juice is then transferred to tank or Barrel to undergo Malo-lactic fermentation. Each batch is kept separate to determine on a year by year basis the quality of the fruit from that vineyard. All wine is racked and returned to barrel 2 to 3 times during the 12 moth period to ensure a clean wine that does not need any fining or filtration.