Bright deep purple colour. The nose displays spicy, savoury aromas, with a rusticity to it counterbalanced by notes of cherry dark currants and red plums.

On the palate this wine is powerful and to the point, with juicy red fruit and subtle oak tones to complement. The savoury nature of Montepulciano shows towards the finish, where firm tannins, black olive and herbaceous characters linger on.

Medium bodied, multifaceted, and textural, this is a wine for any occasion and a multitude of food pairings.

The fruit was hand-picked on the 16th of April. On the same day it was crushed into open top fermenters over a small portion of whole bunches. Inoculated and allowed to warm up over the first forty-eight hours, the ferment was then kept relatively cold and only gently worked with twice daily pump overs to retain fragrance and limit the extraction of harsh phenolics.

Once dry the wine was pressed to tank, where it completed malolactic fermentation before being racked to a selection of French hogsheads. It was cellared for nine months to soften the wine before a final racking, filtration, and then bottling.

The Montepulciano vineyard, located on the Stone Well Estate, was planted in 2001 and is Australia's first vineyard dedicated to this variety indigenous to Italy. Trained onto a single cordon wire, the canopies produced from the well-established bilateral cordons are managed using a vertical shoot positioning trellising system. This variety is very fruitful and helps produce intensely flavored yet balanced fruit. Bunch thinning is carried out post-véraison. The brown clay soils have shallow underlying sedimentary bedrock. Although Montepulciano is a late-ripening grape variety, it possesses an exceptional ability to retain great acidity levels even in warm growing conditions.

Alc/Vol:  14.0%