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Mourvèdre calls the shots in the 2024 rosé to the tune of 90% of the blend. Vermentino plays a key cameo to bring racy freshness, while Cinsault adds a dash of cherry-fruited flesh. Despite the atypically warm conditions, Rob Mann explains the season delivered fruit of “tremendous depth and intensity with balanced, high natural acidity”. He allowed a full five months on lees in seasoned barriques to dial up the vivacity and texture of a wine that promises to keep charting the course of great Aussie rosé.
Most of the fruit is drawn from dry-grown bush vines on Powderbark Vineyard’s ironstone gravel hilltop. With a focus on freshness, the fruit from these vines was picked on the cusp of full maturity. The Mourvèdre was then pressed as bunches using a traditional, ultra-light Champagne cycle along with a small percentage of Vermentino for its freshening acid streak and a splash of flesh-giving Cinsault. The juice was run directly to seasoned French oak barriques and fermented with indigenous yeasts.
With a touch more colour this year, it’s wonderfully aromatic, with high-toned notes of citrus, berries, wet slate, Provençal herbs and a refreshing, inviting tonic lift. The muscle of 2024 is there, apparent in the powerful, complex flavours, silky weight and base notes of wet minerals and iron, earth and salt. Spice and fresh acid cut, too, and it has a long draw. Dimension and detail—this is a class act.