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Thistledown Cunning Plan Shiraz

Thistledown Cunning Plan Shiraz

Thistledown Cunning Plan Shiraz

Great depth of ripe plum and blackberry fruit flavours. A full bodied wine with a succulent palate, lively spices and fine velvety tannins.
 
The beautiful region of McLaren Vale is bounded by the Gulf to the West and the various ranges to the East and North. Geologically one of the most diverse regions on earth, it has long been the home to some of Australia’s finest expressions of Shiraz. Our fruit comes from the Moray Park vineyard in the McLaren Flat sub-region. Low yielding and ultra-intense, we handle the fruit gently to capture the delicious berry fruit character, overlaid with subtle wood-spice. 

Rare is the vintage that combines good yields and high quality but 2021 was just that. A remarkable vintage in that it was once again pandemic affected but that it was measured and mild with none of the heat spikes or drought conditions of recent years. With good levels of winter rains filling soil profiles, the mild weather with intermittent rains throughout the growing and ripening season ensured that fruit ripened over a long
period of time and the vintage was one of the longest in recent history. The results are spectacular, healthy fruit, moderate sugars and complex flavours, have resulted in wines of beautiful balance, fragrance and varietal typicity.

Winemaking is simple with The Cunning Plan. Take perfectly balanced fruit, pick, gently crush to preserve whole berries and allow to soak for 4 days prior to a wild fermentation. Pressed off to 300 litre French hogsheads, of which 15% are new, where the wine ages for 10 months prior to bottling unfined and unfiltered.

For more information about our selection of wines from thistledown please visit https://www.auswinesonline.co.uk/product-category/thistledown/

For more information about the winery please go to :  http://www.thistledownwines.com/

Thistledown Wine Company work with a unique blend of unrivalled fruit sources and the experience of both the New and the Old Worlds, lent by our 2 Masters of Wine. We craft wine of subtlety, texture and detail – wines a long way down the path to perfect balance. 

Best known as one of the leaders of the contemporary Grenache movement, Thistledown Wines make small batch Grenache, Shiraz and Chardonnay from McLaren Vale, Barossa Valley and the Adelaide Hills. Alongside Wild & Wilder Wines, benchmark regional varietals and Mediterranean blends, and Millions Suns, sustainably certified wines from The Riverland, we produce world class wines with quality, value and sustainability at their core.

Thistledown Cunning Plan Shiraz

Producer: Colour: RedGrape: ShirazRegion: South AustraliaVintage: 2022SKU: THIS12

£14.99 a bottle

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Thistledown

Thistledown Wines

Thistledown works closely with a diverse group of growers across the Barossa, McLaren Vale, Adelaide Hills and Langhorne Creek regions of South Australia and seeks out growers whose fruit is capable of expressing balance, varietal expression and a keen sense of place. In general, Thistledown sources fruit that is grown at about 3 tons per acre which we believe provides us with the optimal combination of concentration, fruit purity and balance. The regions of Barossa and McLaren Vale are blessed with a multitude of soil structures and we like to work with fruit that displays the effects of the changing nature of the soil explicitly – be that the rich, deep terra rossa soils of the Barossa Valley floor or the undulating, sandy soils of Blewitt Springs in McLaren Vale. Much is talked about the role of old vines and they are indeed a fabulous resource. However, they are not a guarantee of quality and in some years, having a trellised, judiciously irrigated middle aged vine may well provide wine of better balance than a dry grown old vine. We therefore like to work with a spread of trellised and bush vine vineyards, old and new, dry grown and irrigated. The consistent factor must be limited yields and balance.

 

South Australia

South Australia is the largest wine producing state of Australia. It may be surprising to most that the Riverland region is the state’s largest grape producing area. The Barossa Valley is famed for its full-bodied, rich, ripe and generous reds. The Coonawarra is internationally renowned for its Cabernet Sauvignon (and prized ‘terra rossa’ soils). Padthaway, McLaren Vale, and the Clare Valley all make major contributions, and the importance of the Adelaide Hills is rapidly increasing.

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