Single Vineyard Stone Well Grenache 2024
$65.00
Single Vineyard Stone Well Grenache 2024. Organic and vegan-friendly, 100% Grenache grown on our Stone Well vineyard at Marananga.
A beautiful bright crimson in the glass, with a floral bouquet of red fruits. Raspberry, cherry, red plum and ripe strawberry, carrying real elegance alongside generosity and power.
The palate is immediately approachable, opening with seamless ripe red berries before moving to a savoury mid and back palate with energy and long-lasting tannins. Red cherry, blackcurrant, plum and red earth carry the wine to a long finish. Fruit sweetness, fresh acidity, firm grape skin tannins and mid-palate texture play harmoniously together.
Planted in 2009 and trained to a single cordon wire, the vineyard's north-westerly aspect and brown clay soils over calcareous chalk give this wine its balanced acid and fresh flavour. Matured twelve months on fine lees in French oak foudre.
Decant and enjoy now, or cellar away.
The Closure
This is the first Stone Well Grenache under cork in fourteen years. We opened the old ones before we decided.
Read why we went backSingle Vineyard Stone Well Grenache 2024
Give it air. It rewards the wait.
Tscharke Stone Well Grenache 2024
Wine Details
Vintage: 2024
Vineyard: Stone Well
Variety: 100% Grenache
Alcohol: 15%
pH: 3.58
Titratable Acidity: 5.7 g/L
Taste Profile
A beautiful bright crimson.
The aromas evoke a floral bouquet of red fruits.
This 2024 Barossa Valley Grenache offers the most seductive combination of raspberries, cherry, red plum, ripe strawberry. There is so much in the glass. This wine has incredible elegance, is generous and powerful.
The palate is super approachable, opening with seamless ripe red berries notes, leading to a savoury mid to back-palate with energy and long- lasting tannins. Notes of red cherries, blackcurrants, plums and red earth carry the wine to the most beautiful, long finish. This wine’s balance is something else...Fresh fruit sweetness, fresh acidity, firm grape skin tannins, and mid- palate texture play harmoniously and keep the wine dancing on the taste buds. Decant and enjoy now, or cellar away.
Vintage Notes
After a long and late 2023 vintage, 2024 vintage proved to be quite the opposite. Winter was 28 per cent below average rains and spring was even drier with only 48 per cent of average. The dry winter and spring made the vines work during the early part of the growing season, and bud burst started three weeks earlier than the year before.
With some rain, and slightly cooler than average days, December and early January saw vines flourish. Veraison in many vineyards was a month earlier than 2023. January finished with average temperatures, but in February, with no rain and the temperature 2°C above average, vines ripened quickly, and harvest was away.
In 2024, quality across the board looks exceptional from all the Tscharke Estate Vineyards, especially for Grenache and Grenache Blanc.
Winemaking
Harvested in March, the fruit was fully destemmed, with a portion of stalks returned to the fermenter to build texture and contribute subtle spice characteristics. The ferment was allowed to naturally warm to 30°C, with the cap gently hand plunged two to three times daily to encourage the extraction of tannin and structure from the skins.
Once dry, the free-run and pressed fractions were transferred to tank to complete malolactic fermentation.
In late April, the 2024 Grenache was transferred, with fine lees, to a French oak foudre, where it underwent 12 months of élevage before being racked and bottled.
We put the cork back in.
And we did it on purpose.
Fourteen years ago we moved the Stone Well Grenache to screwcap. So did most of the Barossa. It was the right call at the time and we'd make it again.
Then we started opening the old ones.
Damien went back through the cellar and pulled Stone Well Grenache from either side of the line. Cork on one side, screwcap on the other. Same vineyard, same hands, same fruit.
The corked bottles were better.
Not slightly. The wines under cork had gone somewhere the screwcapped ones hadn't. The tannin had knitted. The colour had held. The fruit had turned savoury instead of simply getting quieter. The screwcapped bottles were clean and correct and exactly where we left them. The corked ones had moved.
You'll find people who tell you that shouldn't happen. We're not going to argue with them. We're telling you what was in the glasses in front of us.
So from 2024, this wine goes back under cork. We can do it now because cork isn't what it was. Every cork under this wine is screened individually for taint before it reaches the line. Not batch sampled. Checked one at a time. The problem that drove us out has been engineered away. What's left is the thing we wanted in the first place. A wine that breathes, slowly, for as long as you're prepared to leave it alone.
Lay it down. On its side.
Give it ten years.
Planted 2009. Northwest facing, brown clay over chalk.
It ripens last.
We wait for it.
We think you'll enjoy these wines.
