One of our best - 2009 Power of One Shiraz

Must cake from the basket press, showing whole berries.
French oak barrique barrel from the 2009 vintage

New Release wine - 2009 Power of One Shiraz
Without doubt, this is one of our best ever wines. It has everything that we strive for in showcasing the Adelaide Plains as a wine region. Its a complex and vinous offering,  oozing dark fruit flavour, with enough grip to get your lips smacking and gums chattering.
These Old Plains wines are made from some of the last remaining old vine vineyards in the 'Plains, hand picked, open fermented and basket pressed. Power of One was matured for 24 months in seasoned French oak barriques, with a sprinkling of new tight Russian holding the rails.
Fads come and go, people chase the next big thing in wine, we simply stick to our guns, stick to what we believe in, don't compromise on quality and deliver some of the best wine the country can offer, enjoy!

link to wines page - ORDER HERE

..."It's glorious, old-fashioned wine of bare-faced honesty and purity"...
2009 Power of One shiraz, Philip White - Indaily

...Slippery smooth, oak-struck, spicy and earthen "...
2009 Power of One shiraz, Campbell Mattinson - Winefront

DOWNLOAD 2009 POWER OF ONE
LATEST CRITICS REVIEWS

2010 Longhop "twins" set jaws flapping

Its been the culmination of a busy couple of months. Vintage 2011 was demanding, but all wines are now safely tucked away in barrel. Stay tuned in 12 months all will be revealed, we're quietly confident our 2011's will stand out.

In amongst vintage we released the 2010 Longhop Shiraz, now into its sixth vintage release, we've stuck by our existing formula. Vineyards from Gawler River, Angle Vale and Bibaringa/One Tree Hill regions provide a tremendous depth of flavour. Each region brings a different component. Gawler River, sandy alluvium soil, bright red fruit flavours. Angle Vale, provides the old vine component, clay/red loams over broken limestone gives plum, chocolate and gun-barrel glint. Bibaringa at 300 metres altitude, quartz, slate and limestone adds beautiful grip, it's genuinley lipsmackingly good.

For us the standout is our first release Longhop Cabernet Sauvignon. Fruit from our 50 year old Evanston Gardens vineyard, nestled amongst river red gums, sited on sandy loam, combined with a fair dash of One Tree Hill fruit, gives a unique take on this noble variety.

Both these wines have already received great reviews, their quality looks assured... read on

link to wines page - ORDER HERE

The Winefront By Campbell Mattinson

1st release  Longhop Cabernet Sauvignon 2010, Tuesday, Apr 5 2011 - 92 Points 
A friend asked me recently whether it was still possible to find 'budget' reds that would cellar well. His thinking was: Can I buy something cheap and turn it into something better by stashing it at the bottom of a cupboard for five years?
A gave a long-winded answer, but I would have been better just opening a bottle of this Longhop Cabernet Sauvignon and saying, Yes. It's a bargain as a drink-now proposition, but it will cellar well for 4-8 years, if you so desire. Might even go longer than that. It tastes of blackcurrant, dust, eucalypt and toasty vanillin oak. It has enough tannin, but not too much. Enough flavour, without being in any way over-blown. It's the kind of balanced, well-made, well-flavoured, over-delivering wine that once upon a time put Australia on the map.

Longhop Shiraz 2010, Tuesday, Apr 5 2011 - 92 Points 
I'd probably drink this latest release Longhop Shiraz young but there's no reason why it shouldn't have a healthy life in the cellar - I wouldn't be surprised if it stretched out for longer than the drinking window provided.
It's ripping value. It's fleshy and flavoursome but dry and structured too. If this is an early indication of the quality of the 2010 South Australian red vintage, then we’re in for a treat. Blackberries, menthol, nutty oak and cloves. The texture's creamy, the flavour substantial, the length of flavour excellent. It's likely to be one of the best value reds of the year.

Philip White 12 April 2011 - Drankster, Drinkster & Indaily

2010 Longhop Shiraz - 91 +++ Points
Domenic Torzi and Tim Freeland consistently produce two suites of incredibly cheap, very high-quality, honest-to-goodness brands, Old Plains and Longhop, from the north Adelaide Plains and adjacent Mount Lofty Ranges. This wine comes from 15-year-old to more than 50-year-old vines at Munno Para, Angle Vale and One Tree Hill, all on the old-fashioned single-wire trellis. It reminds me of the Angle Vale QVS reds Max Schubert made for a time with Lindsay Stanley and Jack Minnett, before Jack let the houses eat their vineyard.
Max best summarised the regional style when he told me in 1984: "Halfway between the older, heavier, fuller style, and the new, light-bodied styles ... perhaps tending towards the heavier style (!)".
It's rich, spicy, aniseed-like wine, with an almost sinister fresh-hewn blackwood edge, which is from pips and skins as much as seasoned oak. It has no jam, but a tantalising elegance for its intensity, and will become a true beauty with five years under the house.

2010 Longhop Cabernet Sauvignon 92 +++ Points
It's wildly intense, licoricey, syrupy wine with sinblack tannins that suck all the blood clean outta your lips: Both these improve beautifully with an hour of decanter. Stunning value!

Old Vine Calling - Adelaide Plains

The new release Old Plains range

link to wines page

Were pleased to announce the new release of the 2008 Old Plains Old Vines Series. These wines are hand made from grapes grown in the last remaining old vine vineyards in the Adelaide Plains region of South Australia.
These vineyards were generally planted post WWII by Italian migrants, returned servicemen and ex POW's during the 50's.
They survived intact until the 80's when many were uprooted and replaced by cash crops, market gardens and almond groves.
Families generally left and acre or two or a couple of rows for the family cantina wine. Since 2002 Old Plains has been sourcing these grapes and have now combined all the old vine gear under the Old Plains label!
Full of power, they ooze all the dark fruit flavours that only hand made basket pressed wines can offer.
 

Unearthing the Adelaide Plains

Gagliardi vineyard Old Vine Grenache pictured top. Along with a couple of relics! Pickaxe stubbies burried under vine.

Vintage 2010 looks to be one of our finest efforts yet. Literally everything went according to plan.
Starting with shiraz from the old vine sites at Angle Vale and Gawler River, growers welcomed mild harvest conditions, the fruit, typically small berries in loose bunches, came in with sensational flavours, balanced acid and lower baumes.
Healthy conditioning of fruit was reflected across all our vineyards including the Bibaringa and One Tree Hill sites. Only one small batch of shiraz had a bit of sunburn.
Twenty Ten was also the year of the easy ferment! Wild yeasts got them ticking over, finishing off the last couple of points in barrel seems to really soften the wine.
Our new release One Tree Hill cabernet sauvignon also looks the goods. Grown at 300 metres altitude we think were onto something here.
Grenache suffered the effects of the November heat wave. Yields were well down on previous vintages, however the long mild summer really helped it along. Interestingly grenache harvest was our earliest on record. As for quality, the picture above of the Gagliardi old vine grenache tells the story. Awesome.
What an amazing vineyard, but typically under pressure from the villa block developers as gutter to gutter housing creeps closer.
We also stumbled across a couple of relics from the past. Pickaxe brand stubbies of Southwark Bitter, partially burried under vine. It gave a real sense of times gone by as we imagined a harvest completed, the slurping down of a couple of coldies at the end of a hot day.
The least we could do was the same, this time with a Coopers Dark.

Great, Great Gawler River Grenache

Pictured above - Old Vine Grenache at Hillier
Pictured right - Torzi and Freeland in one of the vineyards lost to villa rash, if you look closely you can see the scourge in the background spreading across the hills face and beyond.

We are forever on the lookout for old vine material in the Adelaide Plains, so it was with great delight that Domenic stumbled across a 50 year old planting along the banks of the Gawler River. Truly a great example of old school viticulture, planted and nurtured by the Manno family, we're delighted to welcome it into the Old Plains family. There is also a good whack of shiraz here aswell. Small berries and loose bunches, so vintage twenty ten looks the goods.
Not all good news though, two of our previous old vine vineyards have gone the way of the developer, soon to be villa rash (drinkster term for housing), these two small vineyards were at Munno Para West. Hardly iconic territory, but we loved them none the less.
Sad to see them go, seems the local council views these blocks like dominos, once one goes the rest will follow. Allegedly an adjacent block was subdivide forcing the neighbouring vineyard to be revalued as villa block, the council rate increase was supposedly so huge, no amount of shiraz was going to cover the increase.