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The Case For Castelli»
Great wines from the Great Southern, the nether southwest rump of the continent, which yields the most astonishing quality vintages, both red and white. Castelli are a family of renewable power engineers, who are at their happiest picking grapes off vines. Boutique and very hands on, their efforts have been rewarded by prestigious international accolades, including Royal Perth Trophy for Best Chardonnay, San Francisco and International Wine Challenge Gold for Cabernet Sauvignon, Sydney Blue Gold for Shiraz. Defined by weighty palates, edifying complexity and statuesque grace, the entire range of Castelli represent an inspiring opportunity for immersion into the chiselled and strapping, stately Great Southern styling... Wonderfully winsome whiffs from the west»
Resplendence Of Rockbare»
Rockbare are raiders of precious but wayward vineyards, planted to outdated standards of viticulture, sadly unviable for large scale winemaking. These are however, precisely the nature of site that Rockbare choose to retain. Winemaker Tim Burvill worked at Wynns and Penfolds, where he refined his style alongside some of the best winemakers in the nation's history. Establishing his own label, he embarked upon a secret project to acquire parcels of prodigal Barossa vine. With a backbone of fruit grown to some of the oldest sites in Australia, much of Rockbare's fruit comes off vines a century or more of age. The intense power and complexity of Rockbare's resplendent range of wines are complimented by sweet oak and gripping tannins, culminating in vintages of extraordinary flavour and exquisite.. Precious & prodigal parcels of the barossa»
Benedictions Of Bress»
Adam Marks is a chicken enthusiast. In his pursuit of the ultimate eating fowl, Marks traced a route throughout the barnyards, orchards and vineyards of La Belle France. He ultimately settled on the Harcourt Valley of greater Bendigo to establish his own agricultural concern in 2004. Succulent roasting chickens and ripe juicy apples soon gave way to a range of world class wines, which are defined by their regional eloquence, sublime excellence and bucolic grace. The Vineyard Bress is a place of pristine soils, cheerful livestock and breathtaking pastoral charm. The wines speak for themselves, crafted to the most painstaking, small batch vinification techniques. They are a powerful and articulate expression of fruit, framed by a soupcon of tannins, complexed by the disposition of vintage, terroir and clime... Halcyon harvests of harcourt valley»

Dowie Doole Estate Merlot CONFIRM VINTAGE

Merlot McLaren Vale South Australia
There really is a Dowie Doole, architect/grower Drew Dowie and international banker/grower Norm Doole. Their dedicated team have struck a purple patch with Merlot, fortifying the pick of their crop with a tenth of Cabernet Sauvignon for structure, aromaticness and length. At Dowie Doole, quality drives everything. Viticulturally, the ultimate expression of quality is in delivering harvests of the most exceptional fruit to make great wines. The requisite McLaren Merlot style of early accessibility and soft lingering flavours, gracious tannins and supportive oak.
Available by the dozen
Case of 12
$275.00
Some of the finest, eldest and most distinguished McLaren Vale vineyards have now been welcomed into the Dowie Doole family. Merlot is harvested in excellent condition as the grapes achieve rich colour, exemplary varietal flavour, good acidity and fine ripe tannins. Fruit is crushed and vinified on skins in a static fermenter for six days. A third of the juices are run off into medium toast American oak hogsheads and barrel fermented to dryness. The balance is fermented to dryness and transferred to a selection of seasoned, second and third use barrels. Batches complete malolactic and several months maturation before assembling into the final wine.
Bright crimson red, purple hues. An aromatic nose dominated by spices and ripe red fruit such as plums, rhubarb and cherry. A medium bodied palate with barrel fermentation integrating the oak with ripe plum and soft, herbaceous, berry characters. The wine opens up to reveal roasted chocolate and coffee characters finishing with soft, rounded tannins.
Dowie Doole
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Dowie Doole
A bottle of good wine can help solve many problems, such were the thoughts of Norm Doole and Drew Dowie as they watched the sun rise after enduring a cold, all-night session harvesting some of their fruit from the difficult 1995 vintage

Seeing their grapes being trucked away to other wineries and frustrated at not being in control of their fruit from that point, the two opened a bottle of red wine over breakfast and decided then to form a partnership, the purpose of which was to take charge of all aspects of growing grapes, making, bottling and selling their own wine.

Dowie Doole

Enlisting the help of another friend, wine marketer Leigh Gilligan, to write a business plan, cajoling legendary local winemaker Brian Light into making the wine and briefing renowned designer Barrie Tucker to create a label – the fledgling Dowie Doole wine business was formed in late 1995.

As wine writer Huon Hooke so aptly put it – "not even the most coke addled advertising executive could have come up with the name Dowie Doole, but this name now enjoys a growing reputation in Australia and overseas as a consistently excellent producer of Chenin Blanc, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz".

Committed to growing and making classic regional McLaren Vale wines, Dowie Doole utilise predominantly estate-grown fruit which is crushed, fermented, and matured at Boar’s Rock winery in McLaren Vale under Brian Light’s guidance. Leigh Gilligan, who joined as a partner in 1998, now manages the day-to-day operations, while Norm Doole oversees the Norjan vineyard in the heart of McLaren Vale and Drew Dowie’s wife Lulu Lunn takes care of viticultural operations at Tintookie Vineyard in the hills above McLaren Vale at Blewitt Springs.

Dowie Doole

The source Tintookie Vineyard, owned by Drew Dowie and Lulu Lunn is situated 12 km north-east of McLaren Vale, close to the southern Mount Lofty Ranges, the property is medium to steeply sloping to both the east and west. At 16.6 hectares the site lies at 180-200 metres above sea level, colder and wetter than the floor of the valley in winter and cooler in summer. Chardonnay, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Shiraz and Chenin Blanc vines are grown to sand over reddish semi-porous clay with ironstone pebbles throughout.

The Norjan Vineyard owned and operated by Norm and Jane Doole was acquired in 1993, the property is located 3km west of the township of McLaren Vale on gently undulating land which was the site of one of South Australia’s earliest plantings of wine grapes. An area of 26.3 hectares at a lowly 55-65 metres above sea level grows Shiraz, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Semillon and Sauvignon Blanc planted to sandy loam over limestone. The climes here are very mediterranean, coastal sea breezes, dry summers with warm days and cool nights.

The ancient Bell's Block and Old Rifle Range site belongs to Leigh and Jen Gilligan. Planted sometime in the 1920s Bell's Block is located just off Oakley Road, nestled in the heart of McLaren Flat township. At 55 metres above sea level, a precious 2.46 hectares of Grenache vines are grown to a mediterranean climate of coastal, sea breezes, dry summers with warm days and cool nights, atop free draining, sandy loams over clay. Old Rifle Range is situated in the foothills to the south of the township of McLaren Vale. Four hectares of Shiraz vines are planted to well drained, low-vigour clay-loams impregnated with limestone and some ironstone on the lower slopes. Another low altitude Mediterranean climed vineyard, north facing with a natural and gentle slope.

Dowie Doole