Spinifex Luxe Rose 2023

Description

“Pete and his partner Magali Gely operate what I think is the best new wave of small scale Barossa wine companies to emerge at the beginning of the 21st century. These weren’t big, blockbuster, showy wines designed to impress. They were wines that managed to take the best of the Barossa’s sometimes forgotten varietal traditions and fuse them onto a very European flavour sensibility.” Max Allen. The future makers.

“It seems that Spinifex wines can do no wrong.” Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front.

The Luxe Rosé made its debut in 2009 and, since then, has only been made in vintages Pete and Magali deem exceptional for the style. In the last ten years, Luxe has been released just four times in very small quantities, perhaps explaining this wine’s cult-like status. Favouring Mediterranean varieties that have a proven track record in the Barossa and the south of France, this year’s blend combines fruit from three vineyards. The Grenache (51%) is drawn from an ancient, gravelly/sandy block in Bethany; the Mataro (40%) from a 30-year-old bush vine block on Stonegarden’s terra rossa soils; and younger-vine Cinsault (9%) from the gravel-shot red clays of southern Ebenezer. All three sites are old-school farmed, with few to no inputs or irrigation, and generate very low yields.
In contrast to previous years, Schell is pushing a franker expression of fruit and has pared back his approach in the cellar. Each parcel saw between four and six hours of skin contact before fermentation and six months of maturation on lees in stainless steel tanks. Stylistically different it may be, but the 2023 Luxe holds all the complex detail, depth and perfumed power of its predecessors, now in a more elegant package. Lifted red fruits, vibrant floral and spice notes and a pulsating mineral stoniness flow through the fleshy, satin-like texture to a moreish, berry-soaked close. It’s a stunner!

93+ points, Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front “Beautiful rosé. Bone dry. Strawberried and earthen, spicy and direct, with a slip of grape-skin texture and excellent citrus-driven length. Raspberry and blackcurrant bud characters bloom as the wine breathes but its earthen, spicy, stony dryness prevails throughout. In drinking terms it has at least another couple of summers in it.”

2021 vintage was Rose of the Year 2023, James Halliday’s Australian Wine Companion

RRP $42  Our Special Price $33.99 when you buy 6 or more.