Pirathon - 2013 Vintage

2013 was a year of low yields but high quality. The wines are rich, mouthfilling and extremely lengthy.

In 2013 Pirathon offers a range of two outstanding Barossa Valley Shiraz.

Bluemark

This bold Barossa Shiraz has an inviting bouquet with aromas of ripe plum, Christmas cake, fruit compote and chocolate oak. The full-bodied palate is rich and intense with an abundance of flavour and a deep colour.

Pirathon

Pirathon is the classic and award winning Pirathon Shiraz. Full bodied displaying bright fruit characters contribute to this plush wine. This is an extremely balanced Shiraz with fruit, oak and tannin working together.

Growing Season

Vintage 2013 was a great quality year. However, yields were very low as a result of a very dry season, with less than half the normal growing season rainfall. It was also warmer than average with the dry and warm conditions resulting in vintage being three weeks earlier than normal. Importantly though, quality was amazing. Wines are rich, mouthfilling and extremely lengthy.

Vineyard

The grapes were harvested from the low-yielding vineyards of traditional family growers in the north-western Barossa districts of Greenock, Moppa, Belvedere, Stonewell, Seppeltsfield, Koonunga and Ebenezer. Each vineyard adds its own exclusive dimension to Pirathon Shiraz and combined they produce the ultimate blend.

Winemaking

Following harvest, each individual lot of grapes was crushed into a separate open top fermenter. During fermentation, hand pump-overs gently extracted colour and flavour from the grapes. The fermented grapes were pressed with a traditional press. The wines were then filled to new and seasoned American, French, Russian and Hungarian oak hogsheads for maturation for eighteen months before each lot of wine was racked from the barrel and carefully blended. The wine was bottled without fining, ensuring the true expression of the vineyards in the bottle.