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Halliday Wine Companion Awards - Best New Winery of The Year 2019

Fruit from a single vineyard in the Coal River Valley, 60% barrel fermented after a 4 hour skin soak, 40% skin fermented for two weeks and pressed to oak, all natural yeast, partial malolactic ferment while maturing on lees. Bottled unfined and unfiltered

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Halliday Wine Companion Awards - Best New Winery of The Year 2019

95 Points - Campbell Mattinson "From the Derwent and Coal River Valleys. It's both intense and textural with effortless acidity and gorgeous length. Orange oil, lemon, fennel and honeysuckle flavours put on an exotic show. It will of course age but there's significant pleasure to be had right now."

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98+ Points Stuart McCloskey "The aromas waft from the glass with consummate ease… Touches of smoked, grilled meat, redcurrant, liquorice, dried orange rind, blood orange, spice (black pepper & cinnamon) and rose hip. Very Burgundian. The palate is medium bodied with tannins as long and fine as one could imagine. As with their Chardonnay – This wine shows an amazing level of control. Not a millimetre is out of place. The fruit conveys a cool-climate, saline elegance which is far from sparing. Unfurling, charming, precise and certainly built for the cellar (5-10 years). There are two Aussie Pinot Noirs which I go to and this is one… Such is the brilliance, Paul & Gilli should pay Burgundy a tutelage visit. For now, I award 98+ points but I believe this will increase over the coming years. This is a fantastic Pinot Noir and a benchmark against which other Aussie wines should be measured. Decant for one hour and serve using Zalto Burgundy glassware"

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96 Points - James Halliday "Not your ordinary Barossa Valley shiraz. It builds a complex, savoury palate with an abundance of spices and notes of cedar. It's medium to full-bodied, yet the tannins are subdued at all points along the way. Its large X-factor comes from the cool '17 vintage. Tasted in the early morning after breakfast, normally a death seat, but rose to the challenge without hesitation. I really like this wine and its subdued alcohol."

Mike Bennie, The Wine Front "Single vineyard shiraz from the Barossa Valley. Absolutely pitch perfect. Neat as a pin, flushed with flavour, balanced, generous, polished; everything is in brilliant good order. Plums, cloves, sweet earth, cocoa and tar. It’s Barossa shiraz on parade. Tannin is fine-grained but firm. Everything feels right."

16.5 Points - Jancis Robinson "Quite a cooked nose, dark fruits and spice. Layers of fruit on the palate and good density too. Chocolate, cream and oak intertwined with smoke and stewed plums and fine tannins. Classy but a real powerhouse."

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Jaysen Collins (winemaker) - "I grew up across the road from a famous old school winemaker who was known to be one of the best blenders of his generation. So for years I followed this ideal in the wines I was making. For a hands off winemaker, you actually feel like you are doing something. One day pondering life, the universe and everything I thought about why I hadn’t challenged this notion. Grenache and friends work well together – I’ll just pick them within a few days of each other, chuck it all in one fermenter and let the ferment rock it in its own way. So my theory is that the different varieties bring something complimentary but they also bring something individual – so equal but opposite reactions in the ferment. I then remembered my high school physics and worked out it’s actually the same way a rocket works. Go figure."

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Energetic pinot noir crafted in clay amphora.

Living wine relying on ancient knowledge and intuition. Energetic wine of expressive character and lo-fi technique. Domaine Simha Amphorae wines are crafted in white clay fermentation vessels. Derived from the cosmic golden ratio, the ovoid shape promotes a gentle passive convection current. Wine is energised by constant motion and naturally maintains a stable temperature. Micro porosity allows wine to breathe and evolve over time. Intricate geometric patterned Amphorae labels reference the exquisite architectural beauty of jali screens carved in stone.

NATURE: Lionheart, rosehip, red currant, wild raspberry, grains of paradise, earthenware, heroic courage.

METHOD NATUREL:  Cool climate single vineyard origin: Derwent Valley Tasmania 42.6°S Handpicked on a fruit day after the harvest moon Wild ferment in clay amphora 90 days on skins, matured 6 months sur lie.

Basket pressed, bottled unfined and unfiltered with perfect natural balance.

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Jaysen Collins (winemaker)  - "I love Grenache, I love its versatility and its drinkability. I was mostly drawn to getting involved with the process and leaning to more textural, structured and savoury versions. Then one day I got to thinking, what about just doing nothing and let the grapes do the work.

So I chucked a few bins of hand-picked Grenache grapes into a tank with a bit of CO2, sealed the lid and came back several weeks later. When I lifted the lid I was hit with a whole lot of gassy funk, but in a really good way. It was wild and feral but mostly intoxicating. So for a few weeks after I just jumped on top of these bunches, breaking them up, in real terms to build structure, but mostly to get lost in the ferine like smells that filled the air."

94 Points - James Halliday "80% cool-fermented in stainless steel, 20% as cloudy juice in used French oak. This gives a tactile flavour expression equalled by few other Australian sauvignon blancs. It's not about Marlborough, but the Loire Valley/Bordeaux of France at half the price."

Exclusive to The Vinorium

Energetic pinot noir crafted in clay amphora.

Living wine relying on ancient knowledge and intuition. Energetic wine of expressive character and lo-fi technique. Domaine Simha Amphorae wines are crafted in white clay fermentation vessels. Derived from the cosmic golden ratio, the ovoid shape promotes a gentle passive convection current. Wine is energised by constant motion and naturally maintains a stable temperature. Micro porosity allows wine to breathe and evolve over time. Intricate geometric patterned Amphorae labels reference the exquisite architectural beauty of jali screens carved in stone.

NATURE: Lionheart, rosehip, red currant, wild raspberry, grains of paradise, earthenware, heroic courage.

METHOD NATUREL:  Cool climate single vineyard origin: Derwent Valley Tasmania 42.6°S Handpicked on a fruit day after the harvest moon Wild ferment in clay amphora 90 days on skins, matured 6 months sur lie.

Basket pressed, bottled unfined and unfiltered with perfect natural balance.

95 points - Campbell Mattison (The Winefront) "Fabulous chardonnay. The cup runneth over. Slick, spritely, satiny and sustained. There’s flavour, there’s finesse, there’s a flourish to the finish. Lemon, lime, a sorbet-like aspect, nectarine and white peach, with a classy clip of spicy-sweet cedarwood oak. There’s almost a bacony aspect here, a smoked meat note, rosemary even, though it’s exquisitely pure of fruit. Potential for positive development is huge."

New single block wine for Hoddles Creek Estate. Originally the block was planted to Sauvignon Blanc, then pulled out and replanted with the Mendosa clone of Chardonnay on 101-14 rootstock. Different style to the Estate Chardonnay, 1ER and Syberia. Picked early (11.5 baume), whole bunch pressed to tank over night to settle the vineyard dust, then transferred to older barriques for fermentation.

It's a very cool block, facing East it only sees the morning sun and planted on a steep block with the rows terraced. Even at low sugars, we get ripeness and richness through the mid palate as flavour is well ahead of sugar in the ripening phase. The wine should age gracefully for 7-10 years.