Plantagenet, Mount Barker (Great Southern)

When original proprietor Tony Smith, a member of the prominent British bookselling family, established a sheep farm in the very isolated Great Southern region of Western Australia it took a few years for him to realise that the future was in ultra-fine wine rather than ultra-fine wool. The vineyards are the oldest in the Mount Barker sub-region producing extraordinarily high-quality fruit.

The heart of Plantagenet Cabernet Sauvignon comes from the original old vines planted in 1968 at Bouverie. A portion of Merlot and younger Cabernet Franc material is blended in the wine to give mid-palate richness. The wine is batch vinified in static fermenters with regular pumping over. At dryness, the wine is allowed an extended maceration on skins to polymerise and resolve tannin structure. Some of the batches are partially barrel fermented to achieve further complexity. The wines see approximately two years in new, first and second-year-old French oak. By the time the wine has been bottled, Plantagenet Cabernet Sauvignon has been aged in approximately 30% to 50% new oak. This extraordinarily well-made wine expresses the riper spectrum of Cabernet Sauvignon with bright cassis aromas, underlying oak, ripe, fine-grained tannins and high concentration.

The Shiraz – first vintage 1974 - is a definitive Great Southern style and derives principally from the estate’s cool climate vineyards Bouverie and Wyjup and the warmer sited Charleston Vineyard. The wine is matured in 40% new and old French oak for a period of 16-18 months.

Plantagenet – now owned by WA based family owned Lionel Samson Group - has established a very fine reputation for its Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz.

Vintage Summary 2007 - by John Durham, winemaker

After the latest vintage on record last year we were unprepared for what has turned out to be the earliest and fastest vintage I have ever experienced.

A vintage characterized by frosts, drought, pestilence and extreme heat, it is surprising looking back, that we actually have some pretty decent batches of wines in the tank, in particular Chardonnay and Shiraz. The growing season started out normal enough, with average weather conditions prevailing; that is apart from a severe lack of winter rainfall. In fact the rainfall between May 06 and April 07 was 390 mm or about half the average usually seen in this area.

Mild temperatures were experienced up till November and then the real heat of summer set in with warm to very hot conditions being experienced right through to the middle of March. The effect of the heat and dry conditions affected vine growth and yields, in some cases dramatically and brought on sugar ripeness extremely fast and in some batches, to extremely high levels, leading to frantic picking activity throughout March. The couple of inches of rain that fell during this period was more a relief than a nuisance. Vintage ended in a whimper, with 99% harvested by the end of March.

Website: www.plantagenetwines.com