Vintage 2014 was a season of extremes for us all in McLaren Vale. We had great winter rains which gave us a full soil moisture profile in time for a dry and windy spring. They don’t call it windy Willunga for nothing. If we’d had a set of wind chimes on the property, we would have heard them all day and night from September to January. We had a series of very hot days in January, followed by about 45mm of rain over a 48 hour period in early February which slowed ripening of our red grapes right down. We had picked all of our white grapes prior to the rain ‘event’ and so we had a decent break between whites and reds, like the good old days.  Joch’s analysis of 2014 is that it was a gentleman’s vintage – everything came in slowly and in order, not like the mad rush of 2013. Every vintage is different; truism of our time, and of our industry.

This is our first Touriga Nacional under the Bosworth label, although we have been growing this Portuguese variety for a number of years now. It was grafted onto some 25 year old Shiraz vines. Traditionally the variety is used to make vintage Ports, although has been used more and more to make fragrant dry reds in recent times over there. We made the wine pretty much as we do our reds here at BoB, but used all old oak to mature the wine in, and bottled the wine early. We also picked pretty early as we wanted to capture the bright red fruits and floral characters.

• WBM Australia's Wine Business Magazine Wine Review by Mike Bennie May 2015

  Battle of Bosworth grow their fruit organically and tend to innovate in the winery, resulting in a very good folio of wines. This leapt out of the line-up. Intriguing perfume of exotic spice, cassis and pepper with a distinct cumin note. Dark and fleshy with satisfying, gravelly tannins.

  Excellent wine at the price, and with great interest in tow. 

  93 points

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