Ballandean
Estate’s award-winning single vineyard premium Shiraz is sourced from the Opera
Block’s oldest vines, planted in 1968, some of the oldest in Australia.
Winemaker Dylan Rhymer has delivered a delicate balance of fruit and French oak
in the 2015 vintage. This Shiraz is an eloquent demonstration of the Granite
Belt’s terroir, boasting ripe berry and cassis aromas. On the palate, intense
blackcurrant, light pepper and spices combine with medium tannins for palate
structure and a smooth, lingering finish. Aged for 12 to 15 months in air dried
French oak barriques; this wine is one of our most consistent award winners.
Australian Shiraz – a survival story
Australia
can lay proud claim to the some of the oldest commercial Shiraz vines in the
world. We owe this extraordinary vine heritage to our isolated location and quarantine
law, as most of the world suffered the
ravages of phylloxera, the vine eating louse, in the late 19th and early 20th
centuries,
However
in the late sixties, the Australian market turned from sweet fortified ports
towards table wines—especially Chardonnay. As late as 1989, the Australian
government was still paying growers to uproot old Shiraz vines—a travesty! Sadly,
many growers unable to sell their Shiraz crops once the taste for sweet
fortified ports lapsed in the early seventies lapsed crops would pull up the
old vines and replace them with white grapes.
Most
Shiraz vines in Australia are young, barely teenagers, with the exception of a
few in the warm climate of the Barossa Valley, where a few families with
foresight maintained some vines in a time of flux. Did you know that Yalumba
was known as the Oporto of Australia? Or that the backbone of Penfold’s Grange
is made up of old vine shiraz?
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