Hickinbotham Cabernet Sauvignon 2019 Clarendon SA

Eldorado Road Quasimodo 2019

40% Nero d’Avola / 32% Durif / 28% Shiraz

To understand Quasimodo you must venture beyond the surface and explore the inner soul. As individual varietal wines they can struggle for love but when blended together they can sing, shine and bring harmony.

Quasimodo is a unique Australian blend of Nero d’Avola, Durif & Shiraz sourced from the regions of Eldorado and Beechworth. It’s an amalgam of flavour and colour culminating in a complex rewarding wine.

The composition of this blend changes year on year depending on the season, the consistent desire is to create an affable drink that has layers of complexity built in through the unique varieties and vineyards it is composed of. The 2019 Quasimodo is very much in the medium bodied spectrum, plenty of bright fruit, lifted floral bouquet and fine chalky tannins.

In 2019 the Nero d’Avola came from our home vineyard at Eldorado planted on rare decomposed red granite soils, washed down from the Beechworth Plateau by the meandering Ready Creek that runs through the farm. Two different Nero ferments made their way into this year’s blend, picked at different about 10 days apart at different ripeness (12.3 & 13.1 baume), all fermented wild and one containing approximately 20% whole bunch. Basket pressed and seasoned for 16 months in aged French Oak Puncheons on gross lees.

The Shiraz component in 2019 comes from both the Mt Pilot Estate Vineyard (Eldorado) & Battely Vineyard (Beechworth). We really can’t overstate the quality of the fruit grown by Lachie and Penny Campbell at Mt Pilot Estate. Much like our own vineyards in Eldorado it falls just outside the Beechworth GI so is often overlooked, but the wine made from this fruit would make a stand alone Shiraz that would give the best from Beechworth a run for their money. The vineyard is in an isolated location up a dirt track perched in the Eldorado hills (The same granite formation as the Beechworth Plateau) amongst the boulders of an ancient granite outcrop. This vineyard is painfully low yielding and produces grapes of incredible concentration and flavor, we pick at around 13 baume to retain freshness. Fruit was split into 2 ferments, both gently destemmed to preserve whole berries with one containing approximately 20% whole bunches for a lifted perfume. Wine made from these grapes is consistently at the pointy end of our pre blending classification tasting and as previously stated would make an excellent stand alone wine. Something we have often pondered but due to tiny quantities of fruit available and its importance in this blend we have not yet pursued this pipe dream.

The second Shiraz component comes from two separate ferments of fruit from the Battely Vineyard that we manage in Beechworth. Both ferments were whole berry and displayed fresh fruit and fine graphite like tannins, the perfect fit for Quasimodo.

In 2019 Durif for Quasimodo was sourced from 2 vineyards, our home vineyard in Eldorado and excitingly the first crop from newly grafted vines at the Mt Pilot Estate just down the road. Both are cooler sites for this variety and produce elegant wines of restraint and finesse, a far cry from some of the monster powerhouses made from this variety. Part of the Eldorado component was fermented in a specialized puncheon fermentor, we have found wines fermented in these vessels have a really unique texture and mouthfeel, another layer of complexity in this unusual blend.

We are very conscious not to over extract the fruit as we want Quasimodo to be a wine that is a pleasure to drink in its youth with or without food, so as with all our reds it was hand plunged once daily and gently basket pressed straight to oak. Unfined, lightly filtered, Vegan Friendly. Bottled July, 2020.