Willunga 100 Trott Vineyard Blewitt Springs Grenache 2024
The wine has a bright lifted nose of redcurrant and violets. This profile continues onto the palate where the red berry fruit is complemented by warm cinnamon spice, orange zest and cranberry. The wine finishes with bright, juicy acidity and lingering fine grained tannins.
The dry-grown Grenache bush vines used for this wine were sourced solely from the top 12 rows of Sue Trott’s vineyard in Blewitt Springs, which was planted in1952. This is the highest part of the vineyard, sitting at an elevation of 210 metres and facing east. It benefits from cool breezes coming off the Gulf of St. Vincent. These breezes not only protect the fruit from diseases and help enhance the aromatic character of the wine but they also ensure that the temperature is slightly cooler than it is lower down in the McLaren Vale. The soil is deep Maslin sand over a clay and ironstone base.
The fruit was hand harvested with 10% remaining as whole bunch and the remainder destemmed into stainless steel open fermenters. Fermentation took place on the skins, lasting for 10 days, during which time gentle plunging took place to ensure optimum extraction while maintaining the delicate aromatics. The wine was basket pressed off skins before maturation and malolactic fermentation on lees in stainless steel to retain fruit purity and freshness.
Willunga 100 has focused on old-vine Grenache in McLaren Vale since its first vintage in 2005. They made their first single-vineyard wine in 2009 and have since helped pioneer a fresher, more lifted style that highlights the sensitivity of Grenache to site in the Blewitt Springs and Clarendon sub-zones.
Willunga 100 has sourced fruit since 2013 from two of the most fabled vineyards in McLaren Vale, Sue Trott’s 70-year-old site in Blewitt Springs and the Smart family’s century-old one-hectare vineyard in Clarendon. “When we started buying fruit from Sue Trott and the late Bernie Smart, nobody else wanted it. Today, there is a queue stretching all the way to Adelaide to buy grapes from these sites,” says part-owner David Gleave.
The same winemaking techniques are used for both wines. While 10% of the Trott grapes are retained as whole bunch to lend aromatics to a warmer site, the Smart grapes are destemmed but not crushed, the aim being to enhance the perfumes of this more elegant site. The rest of the winemaking is identical: about 12 days on skins in small open-top fermenters with gentle punching down and malolactic in tank, followed by ageing on lees in stainless steel for 12 months before bottling. These unoaked wines come from sites that are only 8 minutes apart by car, yet they are markedly different in style. In Clarendon, the aromatic lift comes more from the proximity to the Adelaide Hills rather than from the loamy, silty soils, while in Blewitt Springs, the Maslin sand soils act as a trigger on Grenache’s aromatics.
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