JEANNERET DENIS RESERVE SHIRAZ 2018 x 6

Jeanneret Denis Reserve Shiraz 2018 x 6  ***Limited***

The Story

The Denis is named in honour and in memory of Ben Jeannerets father, Denis, a Swiss watchmaker, who founded the winery in 1992 after hed fallen in love with the Clare Valley, and simply and out of the blue, decided he was going to make wine. As Ben says, The Denis is intended to be the best, biggest and most opulent wine we can make. Curiously, its not a style that Denis wouldve made himself, instead preferring a more elegant wine but, this is my way of honouring my father, and fathers and sons rarely agree on everything.

The Denis comes from a single block in a single vineyard. The vines face north and grow in fairly poor soil. In a hard year well get next to nothing from them, in some years the wine is merely good but not great. But in other years this block can produce great Shiraz of exceptional intensity and depth with an absolutely singular character. The 50 year old vines are always picked with great care by hand and only once they are oozing flavour. After fermentation and a month on skins the wine is pressed and filled to oak, all of it French, a fair amount of it new and aged for 40 months. At that point a barrel selection is made and only the best barrels will make it into the Denis (the rest makes a very delicious contribution to the Rank & File Shiraz). No fining and no filtration. 230 dozen bottled.

The Wine

The utter blackness of the wine is certainly a clue to its intensity, Quite stern on the nose lots of tar and spice overlaying the deep blackberry fruit. On the palate, the intensity is very obvious, as is the enormous length to the dark, ripe fruit. It has a quite extraordinary amount of intense bramble fruit, shot through with spice and filigreed with incredibly fine tannins. A case study in restrained power, showing it has excellent potential in a decanter (in the shorter term) or the cellar (in the longer term). Will last for ages in a good cellar.