Historically, many Grenache Vineyards in South Australia were not trellised on a wire like we train our grapes here in the Hunter. Instead, a technique called Bush Vine was employed where the vines end up like little shrubs with the grapes just hanging off them. This technique really suits Grenache as it gets the berry size down and intensifies both colour and flavour.

This is our first release of Grenache. When the grapes turned up a quick analysis showed the wine would be 19% alcohol! I know this isn’t achievable, so I looked around the winery and found some 14% alcohol Shiraz to “water” it down with. Then I threw in some Viognier for luck....

The wine was given just 6 months in old French oak before being sent away to bottling.

I love it. The wine is all spicy on the nose and it tastes just like those red frog lollies. Its very unique.

It has such richness and sweet fruit it lets me match it to mildly spiced richly flavoured meat dishes. Before it was even bottled I siphoned some out of barrel and did a wine dinner with it where I matched it to Pork Belly poached in soy, ginger, chilli and coriander. It was fantastic.