Old Vine Calling - Our new release wines

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.