2016 Vintage

Rain received in January probably turned a potentially ordinary vintage into something potentially quite special.

In this vintage Gaelic Cemetery Vineyard offers a range of five outstanding wines.

GCV Premium Cabernet Malbec

This wine displays intense blackcurrant / mulberry fruit aromas along with some mocha and chocolate notes. Quite concentrated on the palate, but manages to retain a degree of elegance that we expect to see in Cabernet based wines.

GCV Premium Riesling

The GCV Premium Riesling comes from the oldest block of Riesling vines on the vineyard. Our aim is to make something that is more textural than the Celtic Farm, not relying totally on acidity to give length and drive to the wine.

GCV Celtic Farm Riesling

This wine comes from three different blocks on the vineyard and our intention is to make a wine in the modern Australian Riesling style – crisp, dry and fresh. Pale green in appearance with typical Clare Valley Riesling citrus characters of lemon and lime.

GCV Celtic Farm Shiraz Cabernet

Deep red in colour, the wine displays ripe satsuma plum and blackcurrant, a little chocolate and a hint of cedary French oak. The palate is quite rich but retains a degree of elegance with its balanced acidity. It also has a good depth of juicy, fleshy dark berry fruit. A really attractive Clare red blend which will repay medium term cellaring – say 3-6 years.

GCV Premium Shiraz

The fruit for this comes from the two oldest blocks of Shiraz on the vineyard. Varying percentages of both blocks make up the Premium depending on the year. Incredibly deep red, almost black in colour, this wine shows all the usual blackberry, star anise and ferrous characters that we have come to expect from this site.

Growing Season

The 2016 vintage was shaped by a cool winter with average rainfall followed by a dry, warm spring and quite a hot December. Budburst was earlier than normal due to the warmer conditions in September and as a consequence harvest was also very early – we commenced vintage on Feb 9th. Thankfully January and February were quite mild with below average maximum and minimum temperatures experienced for both months. Around 30mm of rain received on 29th January went a long way towards shaping the vintage also. It has probably turned a potentially ordinary vintage into something potentially quite special.