Tait ‘The Ball Buster’ 2014
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.
Feb 2018 – Keeping with the theme of consecutive high reviews that the wine is known for, the 2014 Tait Ball Buster was awarded the prestigious Wine Spectator Top 100 for 2017, coming in at #36. As with all previous vintages this is loaded up with generous, mouth filling fruit and smooth, finer grained tannins. The nose has an amalgam of spice, dark chocolate and pepper notes to the blueberry, cherry and blackberry fruit tones on the nose. Fuller bodied, this fans out nicely across the palate offering rich, concentrated dark and blue fruit flavors that are balanced out with good underlying acidity and silky tannins, bringing this to a long and lingering finish. A savory spice box and anise element coming through on the finish adding extra nuance and complexity. This is drinking spot on as we speak and should show well over the next 5 years.
91 pts Wine Spectator Magazine – #36 in Wine Spectator’s 2017 Top 100
Bold, with dense notes of dark chocolate–covered coffee bean, plum paste, wild blackberry, cigar box and date bread. Expressive and generous. The velvety tannins linger. Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Drink now through 2027. 8,500 cases made.—M.W.
91 pts Vinous
– Glass-staining ruby. Expressive, oak-spiced cherry, blackberry and violet pastille aromas are complemented by suggestions of dark chocolate and licorice. Sweet, seamless and open-knit, offering nicely concentrated dark berry, cherry and spice cake flavors and a touch of vanilla. Shows very good focus and thrust on the long, juicy finish, which features repeating spiciness and gentle, slow-building tannins. — Josh Raynolds
90 pts The Wine Advocate (LPB)
Deep garnet-purple colored, the 2014 The Ball Buster Proprietary Red offers pronounced plum preserves, blueberry pie and blackberry tart notes with underlying licorice and dark chocolate hints. Medium to full bodied with a solid backbone of ripe tannins and lively acid cutting through the concentrated black fruits flavors, it finishes with persistent pepper, anise and spice box notes.
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.
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.
