The idea of bottling single barrels developed from our wish for customers to experience what winemakers do every day, which is taste the stock, barrel by barrel. They are looking for signs that show how the wines are developing while being alerted to those that need remedial work perhaps because of issues with the uptake of oxygen or microbial infections.
A good winery knows what is going on and you can tell this by how the air smells as a hospital cleanliness is best. While tasting hundreds of barrels the surprise is that some barrels taste just a tad better. A few of these have been isolated and bottled since 2016 as WIBS or Winemakers Individual Barrel Selection.
The source of GH17 is single vineyard family-owned block south of the Barossa town of Tanunda.