TASTING NOTES: The Spring Seed Scarlet Runner Shiraz shows characteristic McLaren Vale fruit; red and dark fruit with spice on the nose and the palate. The fruit is fresh, as a result of its youth and a pretty decent growing season, and there’s a hint of chocolate too. Nice tannins and a mid-weight tannin make this an absolute ripper of a wine. Enjoy alone, with friends or alongside a rich stew or braise.

Spring Seed Wines are made from grapes lovingly grown in our family's organic vineyard, located in the premium wine region of McLaren Vale, South Australia. The vineyard was established in the early 1970s by Peter and Anthea Bosworth, and is now owned and run by their son Joch, who began the conversion to organic viticulture in 1995. Organic farming is based on minimising the use of external inputs, and as such our certified organic grapes are grown and processed without the use of synthetic chemicals or fertilisers.

The Spring Seed Wine labels are unashamedly inspired by vintage flower seed packets created at the turn of the 18th century. The colour, clarity and beauty of the original seed packets are quite remarkable. We chose three different flower images to adorn each one of our McLaren Vale wines, simply because they are quite lovely. The Scarlet Runner Shiraz displays the Hardy and Half Hardy Climbers, Centaurea (Centaurea nervosa) and Zinnia (Zinnia elegans) label.

VINTAGE 2014: Vintage 2014 was a season of extremes for us all in McLaren Vale. We had great winter rains which gave us a full soil profile in time for a dry and windy spring. They don’t call it windy Willunga for nothing – I think if we’d had a set of wind chimes on the property, we would have heard them all day and night from September to January. We had a series of very hot days in January, followed by about 45mm of rain over a 48 period in early February which slowed ripening of our red grapes right down. We had picked all of our white grapes prior to the rain ‘event’ and so we had a decent break between whites and reds, like the good old days. There was no splitting of any of the grapes left on the vine after the rain, mercifully, either. Joch’s analysis of 2014 is that it was a gentleman’s vintage – everything came in slowly and in order, not like the mad rush of 2013. Every vintage is different; truism of our time, and of our industry.

WINEMAKING: We could never be accused of re-inventing the wheel here, when it comes to winemaking. Tried and tested methods tend to win out most of the time, with some exceptions. We picked the Shiraz grapes when they reached optimum ripeness and flavour. They were gently pressed and then transferred to open fermenters. Most of the grapes finish ferment in barrel, but some went straight  into stainless steel vessels. We don’t want oak to play the main role in this wine (or indeed any of our wines.) We do use some new oak barrels (these impart more toasty oak characters), but use mainly old barriques and hogsheads (300 litres). We bottle approximately 12 months after harvesting the grapes.

Technical Details
Picking Dates: 11th, 13th and 17th March 2013
Alc/Vol: 14.5%
Bottling Date: 10thd December 2014