1999 Rosemount Estate Shiraz

Notes sourced from Rosemount Estate.

Shiraz is the most widely planted red grape variety in Australia. It is known for producing outstanding rich reds with a classic spicy finish. Shiraz has long been recognised for growing particularly well in the warmer and drier regions such as those of South. Australia and Mudgee in New South Wales. In these environments, it achieves a richness of varietal character and depth of concentration.The fruit for this wine was sourced predominantly from our vineyards in South Australia's Langhorne Creek and McLaren Vale, with a proportion from Mudgee in New South Wales. In McLaren Vale, the long generous Summers are generally tempered by cooling breezes from the Gulf of St Vincent and Lake Alexandrina, whilst the night time cool of the Blue Mountains produces similar conditions in Mudgee. Those cool periods enable the colour pigments and natural acidity within the fruit to stabilise, thus allowing the typically full, spicy flavours of the variety to ripen whilst retaining overall structural balance.In 1999, these vineyard areas enjoyed plentiful winter rains, leaving good levels of ground moisture for the run into spring. This, with fine spring weather, facilitated a successful budburst, with warm to hot weather then setting in through the summer, causing some vine stress, particularly in younger sites. The late summer months then finished with some rain showers requiring the full concentration and careful management of growers through to final picking, The vintage came in about a week earlier than usual in these regions, whilst final fruit character showed excellent varietal definition and a typically bright, vibrant varietal intensity of flavour.The wine was fermented in several parcels, some in old traditional open vats and headed down, producing a more forward, softer, plummy style, others being vinified in red wine fermenters with regular pumping over to extract colour, structure and flavour. A proportion of the wines had final fermentation in American oak-barriques and all the wines were aged in American oak for 8 months prior to bottling.The 1999 Shiraz has a bright, plum-purple appearance with a bright purple edge. The nose is richly aromatic, with fine coconutty oak over warm spicy liquorice and brambly berry fruit. The palate is dominated by well defined, ripe fresh fruit. The mid-palate is soft with generous, rounded tannins holding through to a long, rich finish which echoes with the toasty notes of American oak. The wine drinks well now and will reward 5 to 8 years of further bottle maturation.