Winemaker's Comments

In a perfect world everything fits into its place. But sometimes, just sometimes, you find that the square peg/round hole syndrome is alive and well. This label was first created from what we now describe as a "beautiful accident" in 2011, when a few barrels that were designated to be the famous Kiss Shiraz didn’t quite make the cut, and a few barrels of Sweetwater vineyard Shiraz likewise just didn’t quite match that wine’s style. With tongue in cheek, we affectionately referred to these ‘left-over’ barrels as the “Lips and Arseholes”, and blended them together to create quite an exceptional Hunter Valley shiraz.

The wine was extremely well received, so we decided to continue the label in subsequent vintages by making an actual barrel selection for the blend. Each vintage the vineyard composition of the blend will change depending on how each block comes together in the blend, but stylistically the premium French oak is definitely a feature of the wine, particularly as a youngster.

The 2017 vintage is made up of a selection of some newer barrels from the Sweetwater (53%), Kiss (27%), Belford (13%) and Dam Block (7%) parcels.

A small quantity of this wine was held back in our climate-controlled cellar (15C) for re-release with 5 years bottle age

Trophy (Best Red Wine of Show) - 2018 Hunter Valley Boutique Wine Show
Trophy (Best One Year Old Shiraz) - 2018 Hunter Valley Boutique Wine Show
Trophy (Ray Healy Trophy - Classic Hunter Shiraz) - 2018 Hunter Valley Boutique Wine Show
Gold - 2023 Hunter Valley Boutique Wine Show
Gold - 2022 Hunter Valley Boutique Wine Show
Gold - 2021 NSW Wine Awards
Gold - 2020 Hunter Valley Wine Show
Gold - 2018 Hunter Valley Wine Show
Gold - 2018 Hunter Valley Boutique Wine Show
Gold - 2018 NSW Small Winemakers Show

Tasting Notes

At five years, this wine has a youthful deep purple colour with a ruby hue. The nose is a menagerie of youthful and tertiary aromas; tea smoke, coffee grounds, dark exotic spices as well as crème de mure, fresh black cherries and dark plum fruits.

The palate is medium to full-bodied and in an enticing place, showing youthful fruitiness and aging complexity. The tannins are silky and surrounded by notes of dried mulberry, maraschino cherry and kalamata olives. There are layers hinting at couverture chocolate, Christmas spices, roasted coffee and oaky vanilla pod. There is excellent length on the palate supported by a juicy generosity. It’s drinking beautifully now but will continue to grow in complexity with more time in the bottle. Pure awesomeness….
Drink 2023 to 2037+

ABV - 14.5%
Original production - 544 Dozen
Cellared and re-released 2023 - 48 dozen