2021 onyx durif
Our 2021 Onyx Durif comprises fruit from two different vineyards; our home vineyard in Eldorado, and a proven mature vineyard in Rutherglen.
Our home vineyard in Eldorado was planted in 2008 from cuttings taken from an original Rutherglen clone kindly provided by Stanton & Killeen. The site is much cooler than Durif would normally experience, but this allows us to make a more restrained rendition than most would be familiar with. We feel blessed in this respect, because our unique terroir helps deliver wines that display the typical varietal characteristics of concentration, structure and power (albeit in moderation), while also encouraging elegance and finesse. 2021 delivered unfortunately low yields across our home blocks and we only secured 1.9 tonnes of Durif, which is 50% less than we would normally expect. The oft-found upside of low yields, however, is the high level of quality and concentration of flavour. We decided to ferment this parcel ‘wild’ as a single ferment in stainless steel. It was hand plunged daily and was kept cool, allowing for a long extraction that abated high levels of tannin. The wine spent 14 days on skins before being gently basket pressed into our new Italian Nico Velo concrete tulip.
The second (and larger) parcel was secured from a proven mature vineyard in Rutherglen. We are well-acquainted with this exceptionally managed vineyard, having received fruit from it for over 10 years. It always comes in at a riper Baumé than the Eldorado fruit, often sitting at around 14-14.5 (which is quite high). This parcel sets a strong and straight backbone that carries its weight effortlessly and allows the wonderfully elegant and floral characteristics of our Eldorado vineyard fruit to shine. The fruit was split into three separate whole berry ferments in the winery that required three separate cultured yeasts. Two were held in stainless steel with the third being sent to a concrete tulip. All ferments were gently hand plunged daily and held below 27c to limit extraction. They stayed on skins for 14 days before basket pressing.
We then made a 50/50 blend of the Eldorado vineyard ferment and the Rutherglen tulip ferment, and pressed it back into the concrete tulip, where it sat maturing for another 10 months. The remainder was pressed directly to a combination of new (25%) and seasoned French oak.
Unfined, Gently Filtered, Vegan Friendly, Hand Bottled Onsite July 2020.
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