2015 Smoking Barrel Red

The 2015 Smoking Barrel Red is the second vintage of an eclectic blend of Shiraz from our Hunter and Canberra vineyards. The 2014 release proved to be amazingly popular, and we have similar expectations for the 2015 vintage. The blend started life as a playful exercise on the tasting bench during a broader classification of our 2014 reds. The theory was to marry the plum, blackberry and exotically spiced characters of the Murrumbateman Shiraz with the more savoury and earthy aromas of our old vine Hunter Shiraz parcels. Relative to the 2014 release (which was blended in fairly even ratios), we had a significantly reduced quantity of 2015 Hunter Shiraz available, which meant we were limited to a little over 10% in this wine. On the tasting bench we decided it was most definitely still worthwhile as an inclusion, being an amount that served to soften the young tannins of the Canberra component, and add a really lovely savoury element that enhanced the overall complexity of the blend.