***EXTREMELY LIMITED - 6 bottles max. per customer***- any additional bottles will be refunded. Will ship late February/ early March.
HIGHLIGHT PRESS FOR SOLD OUT 2024
2026 Grenache of the Year, Red Wine of the Year and Wine of the Year. TOP 100 WINES OF THE YEAR 99 points – Halliday Wine Companion (Marcus Ellis) 'From the Smart vineyard – a Grand Cru of the Vale – with the great Bernard Smart (vale) immortalised on the front label. Fermented as whole bunches in a concrete pyramid, then matured in hogsheads, with 20% new oak. Such a delightfully pale-hued, fragrantly savoury and finely structured suite this year. A red aperitivo thread builds through the sour cherry, tart redcurrant, pomegranate and dried cranberry notes, with bitter orange, coriander seed, cardamom, white pepper, cinchona bark, cinnamon and bitter alpine herbs. There’s such engaging transparency to this, such serene refinement, such poise. It’s a wine of incredible depth and weightlessness, suspended over a tannic net of such intricacy. It's as good an iteration as I can recall tasting on release. A great wine.'
97 points – Wine Advocate (Erin Larkin) 'The 2024 The Charming Man Single Vineyard Grenache hails from Clarendon, on Brooks Road. The "Charming Man" is, of course, Bernard Smart, who sadly passed away in October 2023; his son, Wayne, continues the legacy there. The wine opens with blood orange, fresh lavender, crushed rose petals and frisky acidity. This is ferrous and bloody, layered with dried citrus and north African spices, which are no doubt driven from the iron-rich clays with siltstone and quartz of Clarendon. It is penetrating and intense, spicy and quite firm in its tannin profile, yet it is pliable, agile and exciting.
Despite the fine acid, there is no acid adjustment here. The oldest part of the vineyard is 102 years old, while the youngest part is 53 years old. The "young" vines have a higher fruiting zone, approximately six inches higher up than the oldest parts of the vineyard, meaning that it can be picked up to 10 days earlier. This "young" pocket has lower pH and higher total acidity, earlier flavor development and, hence, no added acidity. It's a superb wine, one that will evolve in the glass over the evening. Here's hoping it lasts that long.'
97 points – The Real Review (Gabrielle Poy)
97 points – The Australian (Nick Ryan)
96+pts – The Wine Front (Gary Walsh)
96 points – Campbell Mattinson
Our Fathers Smart Vineyard Grenache 2024
is also now available. The fruit for the Our Fathers wine was picked 7 days after that for the Charming Man 2024 but aside from that, winemaking was very similar and the end result is a wine that screams Smart Vineyard.
