Description
“What I love about the wines is that Jennie Gardner and Colin McBryde can pour just as much passion into producing serious wines with serious labels and serious sense of terroir (Adelina) as they do producing a range of fun, everyday drinking wines with gloriously garish pulp fiction labels …” Max Allen, The Future Makers
The Adelina vineyards are situated in Spring Farm Valley, just south of the township of Clare in SA. Their neighbours include the vineyards of Wendouree, Aberfeldy and Sevenhill Cellars. The small Adelina plantings were originally established around 1910; mostly Shiraz and Grenache with small plantings of Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir. The vineyard is right next door to Birk’s Wendouree so we know the terroir is good! The Gardner family has owned the Spring Farm Estate, which is the site of both the Adelina winery and vineyards, since 1986. Prior to the inception of Adelina Wines in 2000, the property was managed by Will and Elaine Gardner, and the fruit was sold to Tim Adams. In 2002, Col McBryde and Jen Gardner, Will and Elaine’s daughter, took over responsibility for the vineyards and launched Adelina wines which are made exclusively from the Estate vineyards. The pair has been involved in winemaking and research since the mid-90s.
Certified organic. Very limited. Adelina’s captivating Grenache comes from a two-acre parcel of Adelina Estate vines, planted in 1942 on deep, grey sandy loam over a clay base. It’s a plot known as the Springfarm Valley Estate, or sometimes simply Block Two, and it’s just a stone’s throw away from the iconic Wendouree vineyard. Col McBryde knows his wines and as an unabashed fan of the legendary Château Rayas, his aim here has always been to produce a Grenache of great finesse and perfume from these old vines. There have been far more wins than misses!
The 2021 was entirely destemmed (with plenty of whole berries). The wine then spent 16 days on skins in concrete, before being pressed to large-format, neutral French oak for 11 months. It’s a superb Grenache from a grower who knows how to eke the best out of this variety. This is, once again, such a unique expression in the context of Australian Grenache. It’s just so fine, so lucid and so digestible. It was said that last years 2020 was ‘a Burgundy lover’s Grenache’: this year only underscores the impression.
Adelina’s ‘21 is impeccably grown and crafted Grenache, awash with pristine fruits and pitch-perfect ripeness wreathed in savoury complexity. There’s a weightless feel aligned to refreshing acidity and silky tannins: the balance is hard to fault. Earth, spice and a touch of savoury caramelisation keeps you tethered to the glass, along with incredible persistence and a lithe and supple texture. If you like finesse, prettiness and wines that sing of their birthplace, this is your poison.
95+ points, Gary Walsh, The Wine Front “342 six packs produced of this beauty, which is kind of like Barbaresco, by way of Clare, with Grenache as its muse, though don’t mind me. So fine and brightly lit, with crisp dry acidity and fine brick dust tannin. Spiced strawberry, raspberry and red cherry, a little fennel, almond, something of an Earl Grey tea perfume, in with some other floral things, like dried roses maybe. Medium-bodied at most, a subtle pomegranate tang, wonderful sense of energy and precision, with a very long finish, stony tannin trailing. Beautiful.”
RRP $65 Our Price $54.99
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