Tasting Notes
The nose has plums and mulberries with chocolate and cedar with subtle underlying smoky vanilla characters. The palate has dense dark chocolate and plums with tight fine tannins balanced with fleshy length and spice and linear acidity from start to finish.

Cellaring
Smidge recommends drinking this wine within the next 6 to 8 years.

Viticulture
The fruit for this wine predominantly comes from a mature vineyard in the Ebenezer area of the Barossa Valley.

Vinification & Maturation
In one of the batches, a sprinkling of Viognier skins were added as an experiment to see if I could extract the talc like phenolics from the variety and create another dimension to the finished wine. A significant and positive difference was seen and subsequently the experimental batch was blended into the finished wine. Seeing that the 3% Viognier addition was minimal, a point was not made on the label.

Average fermentation time lasted 7 days and was allowed to reach 28o c, with the total time on skins averaging 12 days before pressing to tank. The blended free run and pressings were then rough racked 24 hours later to oak, which consisted of 20% new French barriques and the balance 2-4 year old French barriques and hogs heads.

Like all Smidge reds, malolactic fermentation occurred in barrel and over the 12 months the wine was cleanly racked twice and then went to bottle without filtration.

Technical Analysis
Harvest date: March 2004
Baume: 14.1
Bottling Date: April 2005
Alc/Vol: 14.3 %

Region - Barossa Valley
The Barossa remains one of Australia's most famous wine growing regions and is situated approximately 80kms, or an hour north of Adelaide. (more)

Order - 2004 Adamo Click here to order

…Saturated inky ruby. Powerful….Finishes with weight, viscosity and extract, but also life. 91(+?) points Stephen Tanzer’s International Wine Cellar, Sep/Oct 05 (more)