The remarkable old vines that bear fruit for this wine were originally shipped from France to Glenrowan back in the late 1800s. It astounds us still, that having survived the rough sea voyage and having flourished through the 20th and now 21st centuries, this vineyard continues to provide us with such high-quality fruit of rich flavour intensity. The wine’s namesake, Perseverance, should now be quite evident.

The vineyard has been dry grown since the day it was planted; completely left to the whims of nature and representing a true and unique reflection of Australia’s wine history. In respect, we approach winemaking with the sensibilities of yesteryear, with no desire to bring too much modernity to these historic vines.

Made as it would have been in the 1800’s, grapes are picked to flavour with an emphasis on retaining freshness in the fruit. Unfortunately there was no Perseverance made in 2018 as it didn’t reach the exceptionally high bar we set for any wine released from this vineyard under the Perseverance label.

The early part of the 2019 growing season was extremely, however the North East was hit by a freak rain event in December 2018 that dumped huge amounts of rain in a very short period. This gave the old vines a good drink prior to verasion, there were no heat waves for the rest of summer and optimum flavors occurred in the grapes around 14 baume. Yields were down with a meager 1.8T harvested from the 15 acres resulting in only 118 dozen of the 2019 Perseverance Old Vine Shiraz been produced.

As per the last release in 2017 this is a full bodied wine with a firmer tannin structure whilst still retaining its signature floral lifted perfume and elegance. As usual we expect this wine to have a long life ahead of it in bottle for those who wish to cellar.

These grapes are always the first into the winery so we have all the time in the world to fuss over them. Gently destemmed but not crushed to retain whole berries, the fruit was split into 2 open fermetors with the larger containing 20% whole bunches, 10% of the free run juice was extracted. This vineyard is interplanted with the white variety Ugni Blanc, we believe it made up approximately 1.5% of the grapes in 2019 and is co fermented with the Shiraz. It seems in the warmer years there is a smaller amount of Ugni Blanc in the mix.