McLaren Vale is a world class warm climate region, and it is appropriate to release the 2018 this month (August) since we are celebrating the Adelaidean-Mount Lofty Range.
When the 13 individual Adelaidean regions are seen as a group the Adelaidean range can claim to be one of the top half dozen global wine districts.
We like to compare McLaren Vale and Barossa Shiraz and this requires you to imagine a seaside location versus an elevated inland valley. Both are influenced by the same large scale vintage weather patterns yet the wine flavours will differ because of local geography. The flavours of McLaren Vale are modified by the coolness of the waters of St Vincent’s Gulf and the cool breeze that wafts in off the ocean during the late afternoon. This does not make the flavours ‘maritime’, a term applied for example to Margaret River and Bordeaux, as McLaren Vale during Summer ripening has many of the warm and even hot weather events of the Barossa.
This Hope Farm then is mid-way between a cool climate maritime red and a juicy sweet Barossa red. We named the wine after the celebrated early pioneering vigneron Pitches Manning who founded Hope Farm in 1850. Our first Hope Farm Shiraz was the 2010 vintage.
