Over 80 different grenache were submitted to the tasting and in every conceivable style, from Provençal-styled rosé through to full-throttle, luscious mouth-filling reds. The quality of the best wines was truly outstanding. What particularly stood out, especially in relation to Barossa grenache from five or 10 years ago, was their exceptional balance of generous, well-ripened fruit, alcohol and structure. In particular, the wines also showed delicious buoyancy, brightness and freshness of fruit that made them incredibly moreish. Of all the grape varieties tasted on our recent visit, the grenache bracket was by far the most diverse, which reflects the fact that many winemakers are still getting a handle on what works best with their fruit. More importantly, there is genuine excitement around the category, with winemakers experimenting with the use of stalks, carbonic maceration, picking times, various methods of extraction and oak ageing. As such, while there were many exceptional wines, Barossa grenache is still a work in progress. The wines that did not score well often felt like a step back in time to the old-fashioned South Australian grenache style. They were generally simple and jammy, with a heaviness and sweetness to the fruit, lacking in brightness and strong varietal typicity. Broadly, the wines fell onto a continuum, with luscious, fruit sweet wines at one end and stalky, savoury examples at the other. There were excellent wines in every style, although the real stars of the tasting were generally somewhere in the middle, showing both traditional Barossan power as well as carrying a distinctly savoury edge. They showed rich mid-palate fruit sweetness and delivered delicious generosity of red and dark aromas and flavours, with superb purity a key to the best examples. They were real crowd pleasers, with broad market appeal and beautiful drinkability. For a variety and wine style that is sometimes criticised for high levels of alcohol and jammy fruits, overall there were very few wines in the entire tasting where alcohol was out of balance or showed significant confected fruit characters. The 2021 Hayes Family Wines Estate Grenache Block 2 2021 was a standout, as was the Kurtz Family Vineyards Charlie’s Grenache 2019, John Duval Wines Annexus Grenache 2020, and Laughing Jack Wines Old Vine Moppa Grenache 2019 – all exceptional wines with strong varietal typicity and concentration, with excellent depth of fruit and balance. The immediate drinkability and sheer power of these wines also makes them an ideal starting point for anyone new to the variety. But the best wines can also age well, as evidenced by the Cirillo Estate Wines 1850 Grenache 2015 and the Maya Grenache 2010, both of which will continue to drink well for another decade at least. One of our favourite wines from the tasting was in a completely different style: the Schwarz Wine Co Meta Grenache 2021. It was clearly designed to appeal to a growing number of consumers looking for lighter and brighter red wines, with a high component of whole-bunch fruit providing delicious lift and savoury, spicy complexity. While not particularly ageworthy, we scored this highly thanks to outstanding drinkability, and believe that this is a very valid style for Barossan grenache producers to pursue as an early-drinking proposition and a stepping stone into some of the region’s best wines, which have a very bright future ahead of them.
The Barossa Valley 51
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