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 2016: We had a very dry spring leading up to vintage 2016 and it was windy, too. We expect windy conditions in Willunga, but this was pretty intense. October and December were both pretty warm, whereas November was mild. Very healthy crops were recorded across all varieties in McLaren Vale. We had a huge downpour at the end of January a few days before the whites were due to be picked; this kind of weather event tends to give Joch a sense of tightening around the left chest area, neck and sometimes down the arm. However this 50mm downpour succeeded in refreshing the vines, giving us a few more days before picking and bringing the lawns back from the brink. February was mild with cool nights and March provided pretty good picking conditions, give or take a few warm days.

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.

(SKU: 1582)