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2018 Rock of Wisdom Old Vine Grenache

Sourced from 40+ year old vines located in the subregion of Lights Pass (Home Block) on the Barossa Valley floor. This block was chosen for its old vines growing in deep sand over clay. This combination delivers lighter softer fruit with delicate spice and red fruits in abundance.
First made in 2013 we have encompassed many variations of stalks and whole bunches during fermentation to add depth and structure to suit the seasonal variations of the growing season.

We utilised 50% whole bunch during Fermentation to build structure and tannin structure. Ferment temps as always were kept cool and a mix of punch downs and pumpovers were carried out to keep extraction under control and allow the more delicate side of the fruit to shine through.

The 2018 Grenache was aged in one old French Puncheon (500L barrel) that were shaved. Shaving the inside of the barrel is when the cooper shaves the first few millimetres off the inside of the barrel to expose the ‘raw’ oak again to allow it to impart more oak characteristics. Shaved oak is less full on when compared to new oak. With the styles of wine we produce new oak would be too over powering and unbalance the wine. This wine was matured in oak for around 15 months. The barrels were topped once every 2 months, this topping program gives us the best of both worlds during barrel maturation in that we can develop the secondary notes and characteristic but also keep the freshness and elegance of the wine.

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Seller rockofwisdom
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Description

Rock of Wisdom came about when Sofi (Wisdom) let Pete (Rock) go nuts and make 3 batches of wine in 2013. We started it all with the Core Range – Grenache, Mataro and the Shiraz Viognier. From day one we have been driven by the need to share our interpretation of our home (the beautiful and amazing Barossa Valley) with the world via the wines we make.

Our house style is focused on using the more traditional varieties that call the Barossa home, Grenache, Shiraz and Mataro. With me (Pete) having worked in both large (Penfolds) and small (Torbreck) wineries in the Barossa, Clare, Sonoma and Châteauneuf-du-Pape I was schooled in the importance of respecting the site (terroir) of each block and how to get the best from them. That understanding of the Terroir of the sites we source our fruit from is why we can craft the wines that we do.

Our style is best defined as ‘minimal intervention’. The only additions we do are small acid adjustments and small SO2 adds and we use Fermaid O (organic nutrient) during ferment, in a small one off add. We use wild yeasts and wild malo bugs. We don’t add tannin to our wines as that goes against our ethos of letting the fruit speak. We do not use copper in our wines either which is why our wine benefit from being decanted (it wakes the wine from its slumber). We do not filter or fine our wines (only exception is our Rose as the market is still not comfortable with cloudy Roses but that’s a rant for another day).

We only use French oak as American oak would blow our wines apart. We are now playing around with varying levels of shaved oak in the wines. We only lightly shave the barrels and are not re-toasting the oak as the notes obtained from re-toasted oak will unbalance our style of wine.

Our wines are all handmade, our de-stemmer goes as fast as we can shovel grapes into it, our ferments are 1 ton or less in size (allows for different techniques on the same fruit), we only use open fermenters as this gives the best airflow around the ferment and allows for the nasty volatile compounds to blow off easily, our basket presses are hand operated (the amount of time we spend pressing would give an accountant a heart attack), we gravity fill our barrels and hand fill our bottles.

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