Blind Corner Shiraz 2010 (Margaret River, WA)
13.5%, Screwcap, $25
Source: Sample
www.twobrothers.com.au
‘..a field blend containing 2% Viognier. It is foot-crushed, hand-plunged in open pots and basket pressed before being racked to seasoned French barriques for twelve months. No fining or filtering’
Pretty special handling for a $25 Shiraz. Handmade to the max. All of Ben Gould’s wines are like this actually, truly artisan gear. This looks a little too cool and simple for much love just yet, although many will enjoy the glossy style. Not quite my bag though.
Lifted red fruit and white pepper nose on this with just a hint of roasted fruit. Perhaps a fraction mono dimensional on the nose, the palate looks musky and super smooth, albeit a little simple and oak driven at present. A veritable barrel sample of a wine, though not quite with the dry concentration to really bowl me over. Still plenty likeable. 16.8/89+
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Comment
Hi Graham,
Thanks for the review! I reckon you are spot on with your tasting notes.
Thought I would add our philosophy for this wine to expand on what you say
For me this wine takes the most willpower to make of any wine we do. Shiraz in MR is a fickle beast, and in my experience takes a lot more artifice to produce wines of structure and concentration (think new oak and added tannins and riper fruit). Being a no-additive wine, I wanted to show how pretty and smooth the variety can be when stripped back to its raw form from this vineyard
In fact I have toyed with the idea of not calling it Shiraz at all, simply because it doesn't live up to what peoples perception of Shiraz is.
Most wines we make are unconventional, however the air-drying and skin/lees contact etc that we do came about because we didn't want to use additives. So we tried to think outside the box so to make clean varietal wines that spoke of our patch of dirt but that would be 'natural'. Sort of maximising the expression. I guess the Shiraz is the only one that doesn't have this treatment. It is just pared back. We jump on it, basket press it to 3-4 yr old oak and see what it does.
Thanks again for the review!