We pulled a few strings in 2008, you will hear a bit more about it when the 2008 reds come out. Suffice to say we managed to establish a pipeline into some of McLaren Vales old Shiraz vineyards. There is some good stuff down there.

Anyhow, in the time honoured tradition of Piggs Peake we were piss farting around with one of these McLaren Vale Shiraz parcels and discussing options. What we did was split it into 3 tanks. The first we fermented for a few days, then drained the juice off it to make some Pigbrusco. Michael thought it was insane to make Pigbrusco out of old vine, low cropping McLaren Vale shiraz but he soon changed his tune when he tasted it.

After squeezing the pigbrusco grapes the skins were still pitch black, so we put them into a half ton bin and flooded the bin with 8 year old cask aged brandy. The winery was filled with Christmas cake aromas for days while the brandy marinated on these skins. Then we pressed the brandy mixture off into tank 2 and made a vintage port. The third tank we stopped the ferment on and made our first dessert shiraz. Those of you who have seen the Suckling Pig Zinfandel know what this is about.

The wine is like a blackberry coulis, try it with chocolate pudding with a berry sauce (Mojo’s here in the Hunter has got a ripper). I had the pleasure of drinking it with the chocolate fondue at Gazebo last week and it was bloody fantastic. Enjoy! 500m.