Eperosa 2020 Krondorf 1903

Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front. Posted on 24 August 2022.

Made from Grenache vines planted in 1903 in the famed Krondorf sub-region of the Barossa Valley. Farmed organically, bottled unfined and unfiltered. A wine like this, 20 years ago, would have been unheard of in Australia. Lovers of south-east Australian wine might see it as having a certain 2011 quality, in the most positive of ways, in that it’s super expressive and super delicate – drinking it is like drinking the very feelings of the earth; tread softly, less you hurt them – and also that the concept of heaviness is like a foreign country here. This is not heavy, this is not sweet, this is not substantial. And yet. At eleven point blah blah percent alcohol it’s ripe, and engaging, and complex, and captivating. I can’t pretend to describe it; it’s like tree bark dipped in the juice of red bush berries, red earth after rain, another season on the verge of gone. The tannin here is absolute A Class, or Nebbiolo-esque, one and the same, so fine and yet so certain; it’s like the very last light of the day, cast on a wall, moving inexorably across the back half of the wine, the mundane momentous. I doubt that I’ve ever walked the vineyard this wine was grown in, or met its maker. And yet, drinking this wine, it’s easy to think that I’ve shaken both their hands and, lost for words, nodded. Rated : 95 Points Tasted : Aug22 Alcohol : 11.7% Price : $35 Closure : Cork Drink : 2022 - 2028+