The tasting introduced a number of older vintages to demonstrate the wines’ capacity to age and the evolutionary nexus of texture, particularly the increasingly marked tannins of the McLaren Vale wines on show. The tannin profiles ranged from a gritty mandala of sandiness to an earthenware stickiness, depending on site and handling.
As Pannell pointed out, "Grenache is a variety of modest acidity, yet paradoxically, one with low pH" where the pH "is a trigger for tannin." He suggested that his aim is to "pack in flavor that is harnessed by elegance" and "to craft wines that are coiled like a spring" – in other words, wines that are compressed by tannic exactitude.
The first flight was served blind. While the first two wines were clearly older, no one in the room, including yours truly, would have considered them as 2011s, a vintage that was the wettest and coldest in South Australian history and yet, according to Fraser, "the making of Yangarra."
As the tasting progressed, it was evident that oak regimes had shifted from used barriques and hogsheads to less invasive larger, neutral formats. Maceration times grew longer, too. Some cuvees were crafted, too, in a mix of eggs/amphorae, including Fraser’s prodigious Ovitelli, which spends more than 130 days on skins in ceramic eggs, sans aggressive agitation.
In essence, grenache was no longer treated as poor man’s shiraz, but as a superstar on the rise! With this in mind, the team gave a nod to other top producers, including Thistledown and Bondar, also in the Vale.
