2022 Paxton MV Shiraz

From 4 distinct vineyards, the MV displays the hallmarks of classic McLaren Vale Shiraz elegance, balance and pleasure in a bottle. This wine gives the best of both worlds: a fantastic wine when young, but careful cellaring for 10-15 years will reward you very nicely.

Well, you thought 2021 was good but I bet you hadn’t heard about 2022 yet! With most of the country experiencing extreme La Niña conditions, in McLaren Vale we were hit with the lucky stick and enjoyed plenty of soil moistening rain through the winter but no extreme events. Budburst was a breath of new life after a long cool Winter and conditions were ideal up to flowering where things went a bit haywire. Crazy Melbourne type weather blew a lot of the flowers away before they could turn into fruit… but less fruit, more quality and coming off a bumper 2021 vintage it helped balance things out. We had a lovely cool summer, which helped ripening happen nice and slow, just the way we like it. Vintage was well spread out with fine days through most of March allowing us to choose when to pick and preserve stunning, natural acidity.

Individual parcels from each vineyard were picked at optimum sugar, acid and flavour balance. These parcels remained separate throughout vinification and blended prior to bottling. Fermentation began after gently de-stemming the fruit into both open and static fermenters. During fermentation, each parcel was plunged and pumped over twice a day for 2 weeks, to extract flavour, colour and tannin compounds. The ferments were then pressed to a combination of new and mature French oak barriques (225 L) and puncheons (500 L), where they were nurtured for 12 months prior to blending and bottling.