“A classy but retrained style of wine. Not so much a reserve release, as a 'reserved' release. It's a savoury style that tastes spicy, peppery, pippy and cherried. It's medium-bodied with attractive powdery tannins and a touch of meatiness. Personality plus, in a good way. A bit of a extra time in the bottle - stored in a cool, dark place - will not do it any harm at all. ” Drink : 2011 - 2015 91 Points The Big Red Wine Book 2010/11, Campbell Mattinson & Gary Walsh
Grown on the top of our vineyard to extract the heat and concentrate the fruit, the setting provides the confidence in the wine. Deep garnet red in the glass, with a nose of raspberry and spice, it moves continuously like smoke. The palate is medium weight and delicious with the richness of the fruit following through to the length. This wine would age gracefully for 2-5 years in a cool cellar.
Food matches for this wine include game such as venison (slow roasted saddle with a mulberry reduction), duck (anyway you want!), and moussaka (classic Greek style with eggplant and meat sauce topped with béchamel sauce).
Sealed under screwcap to ensure the wine made by us arrives to you as we intended it to.
The choice of wine varieties is now a daunting task, 100’s of different and unusual varieties and clones are available to the vintner and one must wade through these choices. When you also include the impact of growing varieties in demand due to fashion and wine industry forecasts, it becomes a bit of a minefield.
Following wine fashion is a tempting outcome for a variety of reasons, but the goal of growing and vinifying great wine must take precedence, and this philosophy of following fashion, we believe, may not have provided us with a long term benefit. At Blue Poles Vineyard we took the approach that we must plant vines that best suit all aspects of the location and even the micro variations noted within the property – the varieties must be in harmony with their "terroir" and make sure the variety can express itself in its most positive light.
Blue Poles Vineyard was an idea conceived on a mine site by the two owners, Mark Gifford and Tim Markwell. Both are experienced geologists who had spent many years working in the mining industry of Western Australia, but felt there needed to be more to life than dependence on the rigor and regimentation of mine site life.
Mark and Gail Gifford (and their family of four daughters) had lived in Busselton on the northern edge of the Margaret River wine region for 12 years and had cultivated many relationships with wine industry owners and employees. Over this period, and through many discussions with their friends and independents it became apparent to Mark and Gail that if you were dedicated and passionate about making a fine wine then owning and running a vineyard was the only option to take. It certainly did not take much convincing for Tim and his wife Yuko to take part in the venture. Discussions with viticulturists opened their eyes to the different levels of work required and fired intellectual appetites as the development of a vineyard required meticulous planning and an understanding of many factors that could influence the wine to be vinified.
Late one evening in early 2001, sitting in a mine site "donga", it was agreed between Mark and Tim that they needed to act on this combined desire to develop a vineyard. Plans were made, budgets were prepared, banks were sounded out, and then the search for the property that could meet all expectations began. Many 1000’s of kilometers later a property was found, a 50 acre block overlooking the Margaret River on Bramley River Road in Osmington (15km east of the township of Margaret River). It had everything they desired in a property; large sections of iron rich gravels overlying clay, slopes to the south and west, a cooler climate than the more coastal and northern vineyards of the region giving a longer ripening period and it was in a beautiful location.
Sheds were built, irrigation systems developed and installed, posts rammed, wires run, ground ripped and prepared, bike and spray equipment purchased …. all this within the first 6 months – the journey had begun.
