The grapes for the wine are grown on the nice and cozy, western facet of Mount Camel, a central subzone of the broader Heathcote appellation. Right here, decomposed volcanic basalts comprise the suntanned ochre soils, often called Cambrian. At 500 million years, they’re among the many world’s oldest. These soils, along with the assiduous method of Heathcote II’s French-trained Danish winemaker, Peder Rosdal, impart a really completely different timbre to grenache than the edgier, extra clear iterations from McLaren Vale, in South Australia. Whereas one of the best from the Vale counsel grenache from the Sierra de Gredos in Spain, with exuberant pink fruits and a salty slake of tannin not dissimilar to nebbiolo, The Heathcote II grenache is extra suggestive of burlier expressions from the Southern Rhone.

Rosdal mentioned the acidity within the wine is pure, a product of robust diurnal shifts, accentuated by the cool, attenuated and sensible 2021 classic. Certainly, it’s this acidity that compresses notes of charcuterie, tapenade, leather-based varnish, kirsch, smoked meat and cocoa nib right into a vortex of stress, whereas mitigating any sense of warmth from 15.5 p.c alcohol. Whereas ostensibly excessive, the stainless poise of the wine attests to the truth that alcohol alone doesn’t essentially detract from stability if a wine’s structural tissue is in place.