The Dead Arm Shiraz by d’Arenberg

d’Arenberg The Dead Arm Shiraz – the flagship wine from a premier league winery.

Characteristics

The Dead Arm Shiraz 2019 is a bright deep purple. Intense aromas of black cherries, mocha, Kalamata olives and dark chocolate.
The palate is powerful with concentrated flavours of black cherry, blackberry, black olive seasoned with nori. A rich but balanced
acid line provides length and persistence. The complexity of the tannins is truly unique. They are direct and focused,
while being creamy and luxurious. Also maintaining incredible power and structure which gives this wine great cellaring ability.
A wonderfully concentrated wine with complexity and a strong personality

The Dead Arm Name

Dead Arm is a vine disease caused by the fungus Eutypa Lata that randomly affects vineyards all over the world. Often affected
vines are severely pruned or replanted. One half, or an ‘arm’ of the vine slowly becomes reduced to dead wood. That side
may be lifeless and brittle, but the grapes on the other side, while low yielding, display amazing intensity.

Vintage

Winter was quite dry, with sporadic light showers that didn’t penetrate the soil very deeply. This impacted budburst but
was managed with some irrigation. During spring there was quite a strong wind event around the time of flowering,
which upset some of the growth, especially in Shiraz. Summer was hot, with an extreme heat wave and a record high
temperature of 46.6C, which burnt some varieties like Petit Verdot. Most other varieties managed to escape unscathed, which was
surprising. Yields were down on most varieties. The quality, however, was excellent, exhibiting very varietal
characteristics. Ferments had to be taken off a little earlier with higher sugar levels because of these strong tannins.

Making The Dead Arm Shiraz

Small batches of grapes are gently crushed and then transferred to five tonne headed down open fermenters. These batches
remain separate until final blending. Foot treading is undertaken two thirds of the way through fermentation. The wine is then
basket pressed and transferred to a mixture of new and used French oak barriques to complete fermentation. The barrel ferments
are aged on lees, there is no racking until final blending and no fining or filtration

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An iconic Australian winery producing wines loved the whole world over.