DANDELION VINEYARDS PRIDE of the FLEURIEU CABERNET SAUVIGNON 2021

Gold Medal – New Zealand International Wine Show 2022
Gold Medal – Melbourne International Wine Competition 2023
Gold Medal – AWC Vienna International Wine Challenge 2023
Gold – Korea Wine Challenge 2023
Gold – Woman Wine & Spirit Awards 2024

Winery notes (2021 Vintage)
​"This Pride of the Fleurieu Cabernet was grown on Tony Brooks’ and Professor Barbara Santich’s dry-grown Stranger’s Reach Vineyard on the Fleurieu Penninsula overlooking the Finniss River wetlands. This block is cooled by the Great Southern Ocean and Lake Alexandrina where low rainfall and deep alluvial soils encourage Cabernet to ‘populate or perish’. The motif here is always generous fruit and structured tannin in perfect harmony.

Selected bunches were hand picked by family and friends in the third week of April (about 20 days later than in 2020) and gently crushed into open top fermenters. After 8 days of fermentation, the wine was then basket pressed into some new but predominately older French Oak Barriques for 18 months maturation and then bottled without filtration or fining and a reasonable dosage of sulfur.

Red-black-purple and darkly lustrous. The nose shows blackberries, vanilla, tobacco leaf, and hints of minerals. On the palate, generous fruit and structured tannins provide the backbone to this wine. The faintest lick of finely tuned oak appears at the front of the palate, an it finishes big, but poised and polite."