Greenock Creek Alices Shiraz 2020
The aromas of the wine are rich with dark chocolate and cherries, hints of violet, caramel and coconut like vanillin notes, and touches of iodine/ oyster shell. On the palate, there is a sweet core of voluptuous, mouth coating, sweet dark cherries and chocolate framed by lovely lines of long, focused savory tannins. A beautifully structured wine with great palate drive.
The Alice’s Vineyard which runs parallel to Radford Road, was planted in 1997 with cuttings from our Roennfeldt Road and Seven Acre vineyards. The free draining block slopes gently to the south, and the east – west row orientation protects the fruit from the late afternoon sun, whilst promoting gully breezes to cool the canopy. There are two distinct sections to the block, with the top section planted in sandy loam riddled with shale rock. The slightly longer rows on the lower section are planted in light sandier soils. The top section delivers plenty of choc/mocha character to the wine, with all the lushness/plushness in the wine derived from the lower section. Cellaring recommendation: 15-20 years.
95 pts Dave Brookes, Halliday’s Wine Companion
91 pts Wine Advocate, Erin Larkin
Fruit was picked by hand on March 2, destemmed and then gravity fed to open, slate lined fermenters (kept underground, to help keep ferments under 75ºF). Most GC wines are on skins for 6-7 days, where pump-over occurs 3 times daily, with a soft splash technique. The aim is for soft, integrated tannins rather than grippy tannin profiles. Malolactic fermentation is started 2 days into the alcoholic fermentation in order to have this completed early in the process. A 3T basket press is used for all the pressing – it has traditional wooden slates that are wax coated yearly. Pressing time is fairly brief – in order to refrain from drawing bitter tasting juice. Free-run juice, along with pressings are then gravity feed into 5000L underground tank to be combined with the drained off juice. This is then transferred to SS tanks for 2 days, to settle the heavy lees. Following this, the wine was matured in 20% new French oak and the balance seasoned American oak for 20 months. The wine was then bottled, unfiltered and unfined.
Pre-veraison conditions were hot and very dry, with high winds at flowering decimating yields to an all-time low. Good rains at the end of January, and cooler than average ripening and harvest conditions produced a very low yield of small berried fruit, producing intensely flavored wines with firm tannin lines.
