Thistledown Gorgeous Grenache Blanc 2024
An explosion of flavour meets suave, seductive personality! Bright, tangy citrus laced fruit with hints of honey suckle and lemon balm. Taut, yet textured and complex, this is a beautifully crafted white that breaks the mould.
Grenache is Australia’s signature grape variety and we’re slightly obsessed with it. The white version is still rare in Australia but capable of beautifully textured, citrus laced wines of great drinkability. The Grenache Blanc (90%) all came from a pioneering planting in the Riverland while the Chardonnay (4%) was sourced from an older Eden Valley site. Winemaking Oxidative handling before a wild ferment in both concrete egg and used French barrels. No MLF and maturation on lees for 4 months helped increase texture prior to bottling.
The 24 vintage, being the first El Nino season, was expected to be warm and dry but if anything, the early season conditions were the opposite. Unsettled, cool, and sometimes wet weather resulted in erratic fruit set but from the end of January onwards, the weather was settled and very dry. Aside from a few days of heat in March, the season continued, with the moderate temperatures and mild conditions allowing for picking all varieties at the ideal moment.
92 points – Halliday Wine Companion
“The 2024 Gorgeous Grenache Blanc leads with Golden Delicious apples, scraped vanilla pod, scratched lemon, juniper and kiwi fruit. In the mouth, the wine has ample flesh and plump to the fruit, which makes for an enhanced drinking experience. The acidity remains tightly coiled and tangy, but it works nicely in context with the shape and flow of the fruit. All told, this is nice wine. Straightforward, great summer drinking here.”
92 points – Robert Parker, The Wine Advocate
The good folks at Thistledown believe that Grenache is Australia’s signature grape variety and they’re slightly obsessed with it. This is a grape that has been much maligned by the Australian industry over the years. Its traditionally high cropping levels made it a favorite for years with growers and corporate wine entities, and as a result it was never taken very seriously, as few wines of quality were made from it, until recently. While Thistledown is not alone in their endeavors to make great Grenache, they are unique in their methods and it is for this reason that they are now unanimously considered to be Australia’s top Grenache specialist. Much of this has to do with their approach to picking times, to the very detailed, gentle ferments that include their layer cake fermentation method – where they build multiple alternate layers of whole bunches with layers of berries, inside concrete vessels for their ferments. The mesh like structure of the ferment allows juice movement within the vessel without the need for mechanical extraction and so this process results in a very gentle infusion rather than an extraction – a process more akin to making tea, than to making coffee! After years of experimentation, Thistledown have found that this process results in wines that are most faithful to their site, best able to narrate the stories of the vineyard and of its growers.
