Old Bush Vine Grenache 2025
New release, bottle limits apply.
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Old Bush Vine Grenache 2025
This Grenache comes from our own vines at the Vinya Vella vineyard, there are only 2600 vines that provide fruit for this wine. We aim to harvest at a time that can capture the vibrant, lifted, floral, and textural side of the variety, not too early and not too late.
Each year we tackle the never ending challenge of growing grapes, frost, wind, rain or no rain the list goes on. We manage these vines as individual units as they are all unique, this requires attention to detail and an experienced eye. The soil at Vinya Vella is deep fine sand which helps to produce a medium bodied wine with lifted aromas. The wine shows a core of crisp fruit and a long finish of fine tannins that only old vines can deliver. This wine looks great on opening and will suit a range of occasions and meals now and in the future. Don't be shy to share or keep it for multiple nights as it wont fall over quickly.
The 2025 vintage
2025 was an early harvest, though veraison to harvest ran a touch longer than the tight 2024 window, still on the shorter side across our releases. A spring frost set off real variability through flowering, but specific pruning let the affected vines re-shoot, and by harvest the fruit had caught up and come together. What looked like a complication at flowering turned into character in the glass with the wine having a tighter feel than 2024, built on ripe, lifted Grenache with fine pure sand grown red fruit. The the later unaffected bunches layering in darker fruit, savoury spice and our familiar gentle tannin length.
The 2025 season
As a season, 2025 will be remembered for a frost that came close to costing us more than it did, saved by pruning timing and bud number, luck or good planning, I know which I'll claim. The season then turned dry from December and pushed into real heat, 21 days over 35 degrees and a peak of 41 in early February, which is what actually brought the fruit together by harvest. Grenache being isohydric held its own through that stretch, managing its water rather than racing to heady, baked ripeness. Winemaking stayed identical to every year before it, which is deliberate, keeping viticulture as the variable lets each season tell its own story through the same old roots.
Viticulture
Viticulture
Old Bush vines are a challenge to manage, some are low and sprawling others head high like small trees. There is a simplicity to bush vineyards, no trellis seems simple on one hand but complex on the other as we must work with high detail to maintain the long term woody framework that aids resiliency.
All of our vines vines are pruned, thinned and managed to detail matching their individual vine health and size. Leaf plucking is undertaken to expose lower buds and fruit at flowering if required. At veraison bunches are selectively thinned to reducing the variability between what is left behind.
The undervine area is controlled principally by use of a traditional knife on a 1940’s Fiat tractor and by hand. The very sandy soil is easy to work and dries rapidly in summer to minimise competition from weeds.
The mid-row is managed according to the season, cover-crops of cereals and legumes are usually planted in autumn, left to grow all winter and rolled or mown in spring to reduce frost risk. As the sand dries out very little re-growth occurs once summer arrives.
Fruit maturity was judged by tasting and measuring, one eye on the solar radiation accumulation and the other on the vines and fruit development. in 2025 this was a challenge with pre and post frost bunches on some vines, fortunately by harvest maturity was well aligned. Harvested baume is between 13.5 and 14 depending on the day. (we picked across 2 days again here).
Technical Specs
Technical Specs
3400 bottles
14.5% ABV
3.65pH
4.9g/l acidity
332kJ/100ml energy
0.64g/L VA
Vegan, unfined
S02 added (60ppm total 21ppm free at bottling)
Diam 10 closure
Winemaking
Winemaking
The winemaking process is the same as all previous vintages. simple
Winemaking is kept as consistent as possible to follow the seasons and learn the true expression of the site and the year. Perhaps I'll adapt some aspects with time but for now it's a matter of keeping it simple so I can hear and feel what these wild old vines are reacting to the seasons each year. We take two picks only to see what difference this time on the vine provides, this is small production so it all ends up in the bottle but we can learn about harvest decisions this way.
The grapes are hand picked and sorted. These are transported 2km to the cellar at Spinifex where the wines are made, once again a massive thanks to Pete Schell for winemaking mentorship and support.
Harvested 5th March and 15th March, 2024.
Both parcels were treated the same, hand picked and put into 1500L stainless open-top fermenters.
33% De-stemmed whole berries on the bottom
33% Whole bunches in the middle
33% De-stemmed whole berry on top
Wild ferment began spontaneously, juice is returned over the top of the berries from the bottom once ferment begins. Gentle cap submersion mid ferment otherwise hands off in an open top. After approx 8 days on skins juice was drained off, the whole bunches were foot stomped and the skins and bunches were pressed to tank to finish fermentation.
Once dry the wine was transferred into old oak puncheons for 4 months only and then to stainless on lees to integrate. Bottling in February 2026.
Shipping
Shipping
South Australia
1-6 bottles: $12 flat rate
7-11 bottles: $20 flat rate
12+ bottles: free shipping
Rest of Australia
1-6 bottles: $20 flat rate
7-11 bottles: $32 flat rate
12+ bottles: free shipping
International
On request
Want special delivery, message me.
