Normans Old Vine Barossa Valley Shiraz 2017

Deep purple with a red hue in colour. Showing its youth at this early stage of its development with raspberry, plum and confectionery notes reflecting the mixed spice of oak and underlying Christmas pudding which gives further characters of age.

Lovely spices appear when allowed to breathe while the dusty fine-grained tannins and oak provide a bit of luxury and softness. Some earthy characters of bark and leather give an interesting side note to the flavour of this Shiraz. It is a complex fruit driven style with a wonderful backbone of oak and tannin that will reward those who allow it to breathe prior to drinking.

Winemaking

Shiraz from two selected vineyards were hand-picked and shipped to the winery and worked through the de-stemmer. The fruit was crushed and had a few days cold soaking. We allowed natural yeast fermentation and used a careful regime of plunging and drained and returns to get the right balance of extraction. The wine was carefully pressed after 10 days on skins and allowed to complete malolactic fermentation prior to barrel aging then selected barrels were bottled with minimal fining or filtration.

Cellaring

Drinking magnificently now, but will reward up to 8 years of cellaring.