The Wine Blokes

The Johnston family are synonymous with the Adelaide Hills and have been since 1843, having significant involvement in the liquor industry including brewing and running hotels.  In 1993 they planted the first of several vineyards behind the Oakbank Racecousre (home to the largest picnic race meeting in the world). 

They have had success with Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay, so I was interested to try the Shiraz, as I’m not convinced it is a great Shiraz growing area, being a little cooler and wetter than Mt Barker, that produce some very good Shiraz.

Extract from www.johnston-oakbank.com.au

VINEYARD
The fruit for this wine was entirely estate grown at Johnston’s Oakbank vineyard, nestled on elevated slopes about 400 metres above sea level. It was carefully monitored by Winemaker Geoff Johnston and picked under ideal conditions to ensure that optimum fruit flavour was captured at harvest.

WINEMAKING
This wine was made entirely from fruit grown at Johnston’s Oakbank (Wenzel) vineyard and was carefully monitored by winemaker, Geoff Johnston.

Geoff was particularly anxious to keep the vines working late in the season to enable the fruit to develop on the vine for as long as possible. This allowed the full development of ripe flavours in the cherry and plum spectrum and prevented the spice notes from dominating.

After crushing, cultured yeast, SO2and tartaric acid was added as the fruit was pumped to the fermentation tank. Each day for seven days the fermentation was pumped over for approximately one hour and cooled when necessary. This phase of extraction of flavour, colour and tannin gives the wine its all important concentration, or weight. At about one baumé the fermenting wine was run off and gently pressed. Once fermentation was complete, the wine was racked and centrifuged and any additions were made, prior to transfer into oak barriques. During the first twelve months the wine completed Malolactic (secondary bacterial) fermentation, then was sulphured to protect it from oxidation and spoilage. It was matured for approximately two years in oak barriques prior to bottling.

Alcohol: 14.4%

Blokes Notes: This wine has some loaded white pepper type aromatics and quite generous. The palate is also relatively generous with fruit character, but it does lack intensity of flavour. There are some nice hints of blackberry and plum.  It’s delicate and refined which is appealing, but does lack depth, and the American oak seems to mask anu real fruit and makes it a little sappy. However this is still quite a nice wine from a difficult year and probably not the ideal site in the Adelaide Hills to grow spectacular Shiraz.  It has all the making of a good cool climate Shiraz, but lacks depth.

For around $20 though, this is still pretty good value.

You can order the 2004 Johnston Shiraz from thier website, ot just visit any of the hotels in the Hills.