Ladies who Shoot their Lunch 2021 Shiraz
In the vineyard and the winery, we always strive to make the best wines possible. The winemaking process obviously starts in the vineyard, where we carefully tend the vines to drive quality outcomes. For example, we sow mixed cover crops to promote soil health, thin the shoots of the vine to reduce yield and increase quality, and lift the canopy by hand to improve sunlight exposure on the fruit. It’s an incredibly involved process, all done to chase that elusive 1% in quality improvements.
Then, in the winery, we hand the fruit over to the winemakers, who gently crush the grapes and begin to introduce their winemaking magic—techniques like ‘pumping over’ to improve colour and extraction, and ‘carbonic maceration’ to promote primary aroma and complexity in the wine. Our winemaking is done in small batches with meticulous attention to detail. Again, this focus on precision is about chasing that 1% quality gain.
These are the aspects we can control. But sometimes a parcel of grapes or a barrel of wine has another dimension—an x-factor—that we have no control over…
The Ladies who Shoot their Lunch 2021 Shiraz is one of those x-factor wines. We are proud to say we did everything right in the vineyard and winery, and the season was certainly on our side, but Mother Nature has given us another dimension: more depth, greater colour, more intricate aroma, brighter flavours, and incredible complexity.
When you create a wine like this, it tends to do very well. This wine has already been awarded:
- 95 points in James Halliday Wine Companion
- Top Gold in the International Cool Climate Wine Show
- Top Gold in the National Cool Climate Wine Show
- Gold in the Great Australian Shiraz Challenge
That is already an extraordinary roll call, and we certainly feel we have many more to win!
(As an aside, the 2008 vintage of Ladies who Shoot their Lunch Shiraz won the Trophy in the Great Australian Shiraz Challenge in 2010—the first Victorian winery ever to win the award!)
Ladies who Shoot their Lunch 2021 Shiraz is Matt Fowles’ favourite wine. When he was tasting the other day, he was overheard by the team saying, “The 2021 vintage might be my favourite yet.” When pressed further, he said, “The wine has great cellaring potential, so I’m not prepared to declare it the best vintage just yet, but it is certainly already among the top few.”
So there you have it, folks—grab it while you can!