End of Vintage 2021

So, it’s early May now and the 2021 harvest is in the books. Overall, it has been an excellent year for McLaren Vale Wines. It’s not always that you have great quality AND great quantities, but that was the story of 2021 in McLaren Vale. After the dismal volumes of 2020, this will be a great year for both reds and whites in the Vale. Our harvest kicked off in late Feb with our Fiano from the Lacey vineyard in the Sellicks Foothills. One day after, we harvested the Dry Creek Shiraz from the same sub region and the Shiraz for our Rosé, and in those two days we thought that we had processed half of all the grapes we’d see over the vintage. How wrong we were! Almost every vineyard we harvested fruit from provided more than our original estimates, and with two of our favourite Grenache vineyards (Smart and Wait) we were able to harvest more grapes than we have ever got before! Relatively speaking, these are still small volumes but for us this was very exciting, as the quality was truely outstanding. After that first weekend, we had a brief break between our next batch of grapes through the winery. About 9 days later we harvested Sangiovese from the Bottin vineyard (2021 will see a return of a Sangiovese dry red to the line-up), Minchella Home Block Shiraz, Wait Shiraz, Sommerville Cabernet Franc, Lennon Merlot, Pappas Grenache, Wait Grenache, Stillwell Cabernet Sauvignon, Smart Grenache, and finally, Oliver’s Touriga Nacional for some vintage fortified. Overall, Dodgy Brothers Wines crushed nearly 30 tonnes of grapes this year – the second most we have ever processed!

So now that things have slowed down a little, we can begin to clean these wines up and get them ready for their winter sleep, while also turning our attention to the 2020 reds as we begin to prepare them for bottling. We’ll also be bottling the 2021 Fiano and Rosé at the same time, so they’ll need some attention as well.

To sum up the vintage, I’d have to say that I haven’t been this excited about a vintage in a very long time. I can’t wait to share these wines with you. you’ll need to have a little patience though, as they won’t see the inside of a bottle till June/July 2022 and will be looking at a August 22 release date.