Wakefield St Andrews Shiraz 2014

Now, we know what you're thinking, "Wakefield? How am I supposed to drink a film starring Bryan Cranston that appears to be 'It's a Wonderful life' but depressing? Sure, it's a decent adaption of Nathaniel Hawthorne's work but it doesn't have any matter, how an earth can I drink it?" Good question and an easy mistake to make, there's actually no connection between the two... Although, they are both dark and brooding. Perhaps there's a twist approaching.

Wakefield St Andrews Shiraz has a complex and enticing bouquet of dark berry fruit along with juicy black plum, spice, cedar and hints of liquorice, chocolate and roasted coffee. The wine is rich and complex with layers of flavour. Dark berry fruits combine with lashings of coffee, chocolate and spice from high quality oak. A perfect wine to take up to your study and prompt a little reflection. "Wait, the wine was in the study the whole time!" See: twist.

Wakefield is a third-generation family wine business and was founded in 1969 by Bill Taylor who was inspired by his love for the red wines of Bordeaux’s Medoc region. He was drawn to South Australia’s Clare Valley where his first 178-hectare vineyard was planted on the banks of the Wakefield River close to the village of Auburn. The vineyard was carefully chosen to benefit from red-brown loam over limestone soils (also known as Terra Rossa) and the Clare Valley’s cool climate.
Today Wakefield is headed up by Mitchell Taylor whose philosophy blends an ‘old world’ estate mind set with ‘new world’ winemaking innovation; coupled with an almost fanatical attention to detail and obsession with quality. This results in wines of tremendous quality and style that are made with respect for the company’s family heritage.
The grapes for this wine were taken the short distance to the winery where they were gently de-stemmed to protect the vibrant fruit characters and minimise any maceration and extraction of harsh tannins. The fruit was then transferred to headless barrels and inoculated with a specialist Shiraz yeast strain for fermentation. The fermenting must was hand-plunged twice daily to aid gentle extraction and then the wine was left to soak on skins for a further 2 weeks. Once pressed, the wine was then transferred back to the same oak barrels to complete its secondary malolactic fermentation. After completing malolactic fermentation, the wine was racked off lees prior to final blending. The blended wine was then transferred to high quality water-bent American oak barrels and matured for 20 months prior to filtering and bottling.