Medium bodied, red fruit and spice

(750ml) Adelaide Hills, SA

This is a 50/50 blend of Spain’s best kept secrets. Maturana Tinta is grown in a tiny patch at Navarette in La Rioja. Graciano is grown more widely but still in small quantities – it is renowned for its poor cropping levels; the story goes that when planting sticks were offered by one farmer to another, he replied, “gracias, no”! It is often added to great Tempranillos for its lovely red fruit flavours, spicy pepper notes, big tannins and acid. Despite the stories, we tasted varietals in Spain (only one of each existed in 2009) and we were so excited that we planted them in our Charleston vineyard in 2014 … once they had broken out of Australia’s infamous quarantine/nursery system of course.

Our first vintage in 2019 won a gold in the Adelaide Wine Show and in the Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show in Mildura and this 2024 version is only the second to be made by us – we’ve never had enough fruit for ourselves. The 2024 season was relatively cool, but the fruit ripened to produce a medium bodied wine with an elegant medley of red fruit flavours and great acid, that will help it age for several years.