The Tight Cluster Sparkling Shiraz

All sorts of things would pair nicely from an eye catching aperitif, duck pate, juicy rare steak, fall off the bone lamb shanks, to the perfect wine to wash down a sticky chocolate cake!

Red, sparkling, luscious and moorish! A bloody brilliant sparkling red ? why are there not more of these around?! As you pour this tasty wine into your glass, you're instantly captivated by the beautiful rich red nectar with fine spiraling bubbles. The first whiff is of lovely leathery aromas and dark red fruit. When the delicate bubbles hit your tongue, soft cracked black pepper mingled with dark spices of cloves and star anise burst forth. Fruit driven, soft with nuances of well rounded raspberry jam ? there's such a lovely blob of fruit in this wine, it is simply delicious!

A quarter of the fruit was fermented as white wine (in stainless steel at a cooler temperature to preserve the fruit flavors), another quarter was fermented traditionally with wild yeast. The last two quarters were fermented with wood using two versions of semi-carbonic maceration; a small percentage of whole bunches in one and destemmed, but uncrushed grapes in the other. Once all four wines were complete, Carlo found them all too good to discard and blended the different ferments to create a truly unique wine. The wine spent a year in a mixture of tronconquies and barriques before bottling.The initial wine saw some new oak, but was then transferred into older neutral oak once it was decided to hold the wine back. The blend was put together three years later and the wine underwent a secondary fermentation in the bottle. After approximately 13 months, the winemakers decided the wine was ready and decanted the juice into tank and adjusted the sugar. They sourced some fabulous young fortified Shiraz for the liquoring. This wine has been made a touch drier than most other sparkling Shiraz's on the market.