Wine Pilot: 2024 Grenache, 96 pts
Wine Pilot | Shanteh Wale
Multiple picking days, with two parcels from Blewitt Springs and one from Kangarilla in the Onkaparinga Hills. An average of 24% whole bunches, basket-pressed to French oak puncheons and concrete.
This is a wine you’ll want to coax from the glass, its delicacy and perfume unfolding with each swirl — perhaps a quiet nod to the cooler vintage. It opens with glacé cherries, lingonberries, and a suggestion of Russian cherry tea, alongside notes of dandelion root and fennel frond.
On the palate, it brings an immediate sense of pleasure, as flavour intensifies — excellent concentration and potency of red berries, framed by sandy tannins and a gradual yet purposeful rise in acidity. That fine, etched tannin structure carries fruit and spice long into the finish.
There’s every indication this will continue to improve with time in bottle, yet it is already a striking, glamorous wine. Crispy fried quail makes for a winning pairing.
