The 2014 PPC Cabernet Sauvignon is sourced from the Evan’s and Sharefarmers Vineyards, which are situated at the northern end of Coonawarra. The region experienced  a cool wet winter in 2013, a mild dry spring, followed by a cold and wet couple of months leading into Christmas. This lead to poor flowering resulting in a very small crop, the upside to this was an abundance of concentrated flavour in the Cabernet berries. A hot January with a soaking summer rain in February delayed ripening with hand picking commencing in midApril. The fruit was delivered to the original Petaluma winery in the Piccadilly Valley (2014 was our last vintage there before we moved to our new state of the art winery at Woodside). On arrival the fruit was destemmed, crushed and chilled to static ‘heading down board’ fermenters. What makes this wine interesting is a small proportion was destemmed only to allow for whole berry carbonic maceration to bring the forward ripe berry notes with lovely soften tannins. This component was then then blended back into the wine post pressing. Fermentation took about two weeks and the wine was pressed off into tank to be seeded with MLF bacteria, settled overnight then racked to French oak barriques (60% new). The wine was racked out of oak to tank after the completion of MLF, sulphur adjusted and run back to the same oak to finish maturation. One of the envious chores of winemaking is watching (more so tasting) the wine as it matures in barrel. This required multiple tastings in the barrel shed over a 24 month period looking for the sweet spot where fruit and oak marry and then with minimum intervention we pull it out of oak and bottle it. A tough gig.

Drink now or drink later (10 plus years later) with hearty Italian food.