We did it our style

Like Frank Sinatra, we like things our way! From our current red wine product range we can group our wines into a big and a light or elegant group. The big group contains the 1999 Big, fat & gutsy (BFG), the 2000 Sellicks Beach and the 2000 Doyen. The remainder are more on the lighter side, although the 2000 reserve Shiraz sit’s somewhere in the middle.

Our Sellicks Beach/BFG blend is based on little new wood and wines that have a porty, jammy element in them, whilst our reserve Shiraz and the doyen are more stamped by subtle new French oak and varietal aromas. The Lighthouse/DBB blend is our attempt at producing an elegant Cabernet Sauvignon Shiraz blend modeled after the likes of Dom. du Trevallon in Provence.

Notably, wines change after bottling, and our “predicted” wine styles don’t always fall in place. For example, the BFG turned out to be quite elegant rather than rough and gutsy, whilst the 2000 Lighthouse is a touch too soft on the palate to be elegantly restrained. Nevertheless, if you taste our entire range, you should be able to appreciate clear differences in wine styles. If two blends appear very similar, we have failed! To learn, though, one must sometimes falter, and we are still learning!
Single still?

Our single vineyard wines, the doyen and Pinot Black, are worthy of mention. Pinot noir often yields a wine of a unique style on it’s own, dictated very much by the grape variety. What differs between the Sellicks Beach and the doyen if both are big? The doyen simply stood out in the crowd due to it’s flavour and structural intensity. If something else outstanding comes our way in the future, we won’t be afraid of once again departing from our style blending philosophy!