Torbreck Hillside Vineyard Grenache 2020

Torbreck farms the southern reaches of the Barossa Valley in South Australia, an estate founded by David Powell in 1994 and named after a forest in Scotland. The Barossa is a warm, dry, continental region, and old Grenache vines on its sandy and ironstone soils ripen fully, which is why this wine carries 15.5 percent alcohol and such ripe, generous fruit. Low yields and warm days concentrate sugar and flavour, while the free-draining soils keep the vines lean and the fruit intense rather than heavy. The wine spends 20 months in French oak barrels, where slow oxygen exchange softens the tannins, knits the fruit together and adds a frame of spice and vanilla without masking the variety. It pours a deep ruby red. The nose is enigmatic and spiced, with clove and black pepper over ripe plum and macerated cherry. The palate is full bodied and warming, with ripe round tannins, fruit-driven concentration and a long finish that carries liquorice, leather and oak spice. Serve at 17 to 18 degrees and decant an hour ahead. It is built for grilled and roasted red meat.