That’s not a vine…This is a vine!

by Grant Dodd

A quick trip to the Barossa Valley this week (many thanks to Vintners Restaurantin Angaston too for listing Dombeya Boulder Road Shiraz 2007) and with a spare half hour or so I dropped in on Marco Cirillo.

The name probably won’t be familiar, but the Cirillo family are owners of what are believed to be the oldest productive Grenache vines in the world. Planted in 1850, these 160 year old treasures sit proudly in a single vineyard adjacent to the Cirillo family home, and are tended to by hand at every step of the viticultural process by Marco, one of the most passionate winemakers in the Barossa Valley.

It is a phenomenal vineyard site, the vines standing like tree’s despite the brittleness of age, giving up tiny volumes of concentrated Grenache fruit that Marco turns into wine nectar.

It really hasn’t been widely publicized that the vineyard exists, but this treasure should be recognised and the uniqueness of it recorded. If you love wine then you love what this represents- for the record there are also 160 year old Semillon vines here too, the fruit vinified and sold as a $20 Barossa Semillon. History in a bottle for 20 bucks.


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