2019 Optume Shiraz

Seven individual parcels were hand-picked over a seven-day span from four clones drawn from five blocks allowing for ideal ripening across four specifically selected Yarra Valley vineyards. All fruit was hand-sorted and destemmed or crushed to small open vats. Stalks were added back judiciously to select parcels for additional aroma, complexity and sweep of tannin on the finish. Natural fermentation was allowed to initiate prior to inoculation with a specific varietally-enhancing yeast strain. Vats were hand-plunged once per day during fermentation for gentle extraction and integration of tannin. Cuvaison length ranged from three to four weeks on skins.

The 2019 vintage provided prime conditions to fashion the third instalment of our Optume Shiraz. Grapes were sourced from select premium sites located across the Yarra Valley with the express intention of creating a classic cool-climate Shiraz of exceptional regional character and typicity. This assemblage of five individual sites combines their intrinsic strengths and expressions to deliver the optimum, a complete and superlative wine, greater than the sum of its parts. 

Marrying density with finesse and restraint, this broodingly aromatic and refined Shiraz opens with a complex intensity, walking a tightrope between red and black fruits, loganberry, cranberry, plum compote, white pepper, clove, black limes, aniseed, olive tapenade, porcini broth, lucerne hay and bay leaf. The juicy slow-building palate delivers a graceful presence pushing through to a long echo of flavour and finely-pixelated tannin. A core of black fruits, blueberry and granite is wound tight and integrated so that no one element stands above the others. 

This wine is suitable for vegans. Decanting as a young wine is highly recommended.