Winter Creek Winery really does count as a boutique wine producer, tiny, hardly known by anyone, and until now, almost not sold within Australia … how small and invisible can you get!
But what a shame, because this producer offers something that should not be ignored, a passion for quality, aligned with realistic prices, and subtlety and elegance, not features the Barossa Valley is known for!
Mind you, it’s almost not in the Barossa Valley; its more Barossa Valley meets Eden Valley. The winery is located in Williamstown at the extreme south end of the Barossa valley and has a climate that has more in common with Eden Valley, than the Barossa.
All the wines are estate grown and produced, and all are made to their owner’s preferred style, subtle, elegant (but not lacking flavour) and with lovely lightly balanced oak. Most of the oak is old, only about 15% is new at any time, and lots is French, and all the better for it.
The wines
2002 Winter Creek Old Barossa Blend
In this case the blend is 80% Grenache with 20% or thereabouts of Shiraz, and what a terrific blend it is, it works really well without one dominating the other, and without the overt lolliness sometimes associated with Grenache. The nose is full of peppery, chocolate tinged almost sweet fruit, blackberries raspberries and dark fruits mostly, and the palate delivers loads of dense flavour, a rich and creamy mouthful, terrific length and great polish. Terrific stuff.
2001 Winter Creek Shiraz
Fruit, fruit and more fruit dominate this exciting wine, black berry, plums, mulberry with a little pepper and spice thrown in on a very aromatic nose, very inviting and deep and rich. The palate follows this through, again, the oak appears as an integrated whisp of vanilla melded into deep black fruits, plums and spice blend that is absolutely seamless, and finishes with telltale Shiraz chocolate, but again, in beautiful balance. The wine has structure and class, great length and persistence, and fine-grained tannins running right through it. Lovely stuff, can be enjoyed now for its class and balance, but will cellar and develop delightfully, great result from a hot vintage.
2002 Winter Creek Shiraz
As good as the 2001 undoubtedly is, the 2002 is better … wow, what a wine. Even the colour is better, dense purple totally saturated, and the nose is delightful, a perfumed mix of cassis, ripe blackberries, plums, a little telltale pepper and earth again with a finishing twist of chocolate, no doubting this is Shiraz! The wine totally fills the mouth with a round and soft mix of almost creamy fruit, full bodied and voluptuous with a really long finish. Wow, grab some of this!
Yes, I know it sounds like a retailer's rave, but I tried the three wines over three successive nights, in the order above, and each one impressed me more than the last. Great stuff David and Pam Cross.
Oh, and amazingly given how subtle and sophisticated the wines are, even Parker likes them, which surprised me given how much he got the 2001 Paxton wrong!
