Pirathon - 2019 Vintage

The 2019 vintage was seen as one of high quality and moderate to below average yields.

In this vintage Pirathon offers a range of three outstanding Barossa Valley Shiraz.

Pirathon Bronze Label Shiraz

Pirathon Bronze Label is an overachieving Barossa Valley Shiraz. A bright and youthful wine, with enticing dark cherries, red fruits, and subtle spice.

Pirathon Gold Label Shiraz

The Pirathon Gold Label Shiraz is barrel selected from our finest parcel of fruit. Showcasing intense dark fruit flavours and enticing aromas, it is rich on the palate and built for long term cellaring.

Pirathon Silver Label Shiraz

Pirathon Silver Label is the classic and award winning Pirathon Shiraz. Full bodied displaying ripe fruits with toasty background oak. Plush tannins add weight to this generous, harmonious and flavoursome wine.

Growing Season

The 2019 growing season can be summarised as one of high quality and moderate to below average yields. Rainfall for the 2018 calendar year leading up to vintage was only 62% of the long term average. A wet August allowed for good early spring growth but frosts in September and November combined with windy conditions during flowering impacted negatively on crop levels. January was very hot and dry with six days over 40 C, fortunately temperatures cooled during the harvest months of February and March whilst the dry conditions continued leading to an early and condensed harvest.

Vineyard

The grapes were harvested from the low-yielding vineyards of traditional family growers in the north-western Barossa districts of Moppa, Belvidere, Koonunga, Ebenezer, Light Pass. Each vineyard adds its own exclusive dimension to Pirathon Shiraz and combined they produce the ultimate blend.

Winemaking

Following harvest, each individual lot of grapes was crushed into a separate open top fermenter. During fermentation, hand pump-overs gently extracted colour and flavour from the grapes. The fermented grapes were pressed with a traditional press. The wines were then filled to new and seasoned American, French, Russian and Hungarian oak hogsheads for maturation for eighteen months before each lot of wine was racked from the barrel and carefully blended. The wine was bottled without fining, ensuring the true expression of the vineyards in the bottle.