Sanguine Estate Shiraz 2007

Viticultural Practices:

Our boutique vineyard and winery is a family enterprise intent on making concentrated, sophisticated and complex wines inspired by our unique Heathcote terrior, a fault line of ancient Cambrian red rock pulverized over 510 millions years into soil.

We have utilized the vertical shoot positioning trellising system to open up the canopy which helps reduce the risk of disease and exposes the grapes for ripening. The vines are cane pruned to a single fruiting wire with a maximum of 20 buds for vine. Crop levels are naturally low and hence bunch thinning is generally not required and irrigation kept to a minimum with some blocks being unirrigated.

To conserve the natural balance within the soils and hence the overall health of the vines, we aim to minimize the use of chemicals. In fact, over the past few years, we have managed the vineyard organically by utilizing organic fertilizers and employing other techniques such as mulching to eliminate the use of chemicals. It is our practice to utilize organic principals in the first instance and then if absolutely necessary, we use small amounts of chemicals to target specific parts of the vineyard.

Wine Style Notes:

We utilize traditional winemaking practices that are labour intensive but within a modern understanding of its ways. All batches are destemmed and lightly crushed and then fermented with its own wild yeasts in small open fermenters. At 6 to 8 days, a portion of the wine is transferred to new French oak barrels for barrel fermentation. The remaining wine is kept on skins for an average of 12 days. All wine is moved around the cellars by gravity to avoid pump shock. The wine is matured in predominantly French Oak barriques (20% new) for up to 18 months. In good cellars, our wines can age for anywhere up to 7 to 10 years.