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 2017: We had terrific winter and spring rains leading up to vintage 2017, a marked contrast to the previous year, proving once again if proof were needed, that every vintage is different. We had a cool early part to spring too, combined with the spring rain. Flowering was about 3 weeks later than the previous year which of course meant that vintage was 3 weeks later than normal, or as some old locals said sagely, back to the old normal. There was a very long and slow ripening period which is terrific for allowing grapes to develop their flavours. We had a pretty dry February March and April, once the spring rains finished in mid-January. Overall a late vintage with some incredibly promising reds and outstanding whites. As I type this, we have already bottled the 2017 Puritan Shiraz and the fruit and balance of this wine are outstanding, which augurs well for all of our other 2017 reds.

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: SS_Shi_17)