2023 Spinifex Grenache Gris

This is the debut release of Spinifex Grenache Gris, and it's a wine that we should all be very excited about.

When Pete Schell purchased the Dominion Vineyard in 2018, they quickly set to work planting varieties they believed suitable to this unique path of land, including the scarce Southern Rhone white variety Grenache Gris.

This marks the first official release of this wine, and it's a beauty.  The fruit spent a few hours on skins, before fermentation in old oak puncheons, followed by eight months’ maturation on lees in foudre.

It's packed with glorious white and yellow fruits, with some creamy texture from the winemaking influence, and a pithy, salty finish that pulls it all together.  Great with food or on its own, and a statement about the suitability of this variety to the Barossa Valley.

92 points
"Time in old oak was important here because it’s added texture to what is, at heart, a structural white wine. It’s a wine of skin and bones, stones and spices, its dryness a key part of its appeal. We’re almost into brine territory here, or stones sitting in a saline solution, perhaps. It knows what it wants, and it wants for food. This is a good, interesting wine, worth buying and drinking, and future releases will be worth following."
- Campbell Mattinson (The Wine Front)