Climate

Beneficent growing season with balanced temperatures & rainfall during critical growth period optimized grapes’ yield and quality. Cool and dry days from veraison to harvest extended the ripening period and allowed us to make aromatic wines with exceptional varietal character and intensity. Large temperature differentials from night to day have resulted in wines with excellent natural sugar/acid balance.

Viticulture

Trained onto two wire vertical trellises with both wires mechanically pruned back to 2 buds. The canopy is managed through reduced water to restrict its vigour, increase both flavour intensity.

Grapes harvested during the cool of the night to retain freshness and varietal character. Afterwards, the grapes destemmed and crushed into a pneumatic press to extract juice gently. Selected yeast strain that brings out varietal character used to inoculate the juice as soon as juice clarification occurred. Fermentation carried out in a stainless steel tank at cold temperature at 13-14 ?, which allows a long fermentation to retain freshness and varietal aroma. Wine was stored in stainless steel tanks and stirred on lees to produce mid palate complexity and to create texture and mouthfeel before being fined, finished, and bottled.

Crooked Mick is a bushman from Australian folklore who lived in the mythical Speewah. A giant of a man, some say he could shear a massive number of sheep in no time flat, kick crocodiles up to the moon and move mountains. Tall tales or not, Crooked Mick is a legend as are the wines from the Murray Darling region.