Written by Owner, Owen Inglis and Viticulturalist, Mark Vella This year was the 9th vintage that I have been managing of netting prior to vintage which allowed all red varieties the Sidewood vineyards and it will be one to remember. and several premium white blocks to be fully covered. 2018 Vintage concluded in mid-April this year after six This year was my 14th vintage in the Adelaide Hills weeks of consecutive busy days and nights picking fruit. and I am extremely excited with the fruit quality in the Mother Nature delivered cold nights and mild days to vineyard. 2015 was my most recent favourite but 2018 prolong the ripening of fruit and maximise its quality this will be one for the punter to watch! year which, along with the Sidewood and Vitiworks team who did a fantastic job with their attention to detail and This is the first vintage of Shiraz grown at Sidewood’s 100% flexibility, meant the season was without major Ironstone Road vineyard. Grafted onto 20-year-old root hiccups. stock in 2015, Sidewood has now added a further seven- new clones of Shiraz to the family. Sidewood’s winery expansion project concluded just in time for vintage which dramatically increased While this is the first vintage which was of course, low efficiencies and flexibility in the vineyard, allowing us yielding, a number of the single clone ferments are look- when necessary with parcel sizes to make sure we ing excellent and should allowus to bring out arangefo capture those ultimate flavour spectrums. different Shiraz wines, possibly based on single clone/ single vineyard fruit. This year we picked the fruit from the top and bottom elevations of the hills in our vineyards separately and The addition of the seven new clones means Sidewood half blocks with the remainder being harvested at the now has 12 different Shiraz clones to work with across end of the week. While this does provide an additional three vineyards, which is the largest selection of Estate dimension to vintage, we firmly believe it’s the extra 1%’s Grown Shiraz clones of any winery in the Adelaide Hills. that makes our vintage stand out from our competition year after year. With Sidewood’s Estate and Mappinga Shiraz already boasting an impressive collection of accolades and Bird pressure was extreme with such a dry Summer but global recognition for previous vintages, the quality of the new bird netting made life extremely relaxing for the varietal produced from this vintage is one to look out myself for once. We purchased a container for. 7