Yarra Yering Dry Red Wine No.1

Aroma: Stylish, lifted nose settling into itself after a few years in bottle. Shows signature blackberry, aniseed, sarsaparilla, marzipan and cassis with hints of bergamot and sage.

Palate: A medium-bodied style featuring a fleshy, fruit-layered palate integrated with earthy complexity. Juicy acidity, characteristic of this vineyard, underlays soft expansive fruit and fine dusty tannins. In true Yarra Yering tradition, it combines power with poise, concentration with finesse.

Winemaking

All hand harvested as well as processing across a sorting table, only the best berries go into this wine. The Cabernet fruit is crushed to build structure through fermentation. Merlot, Malbec and Petit verdot are whole berry ferments for fragrance and palate flesh.

All fermented in half-tonne fermenters and hand plunged twice daily, some of the Cabernet spending extended time on skins. Components kept separate in French oak barrels, only 40% of them new until being blended just before bottling after 15 months barrel maturation.

A great old wine had to be a great young wine. While this wine is great now, it is very compressed, this vineyard has a proven pedigree & track record thus it will continue to evolve for a further 25+ years under suitable cellaring conditions.

Vines

The first plantings at Yarra Yering into block No.1 were these Cabernet vines and the name was born. The Malbec was also part of the original 1969 plantings. Some Merlot vines are interplanted with the Cabernet with subsequent plantings made in 1990 on the newly acquired neighbouring land. Petit verdot is now only grown on the hillside of the new territories.

Producer

Wine was grown in Victoria’s Yarra Valley from the mid 1800’s through to the 1920’s and was a principal export of the new colony.

Wine production by the wineries of the Yarra Valley came to a halt in the 1920’s due to the economics of the day, changing tastes and the high price of wool. 
It would need a visionary to re-establish winemaking in the Yarra Valley and in 1969 one came along. Dr Bailey Carrodus was ideally qualified to become a great vigneron.

Having completed his degree in horticulture at Victoria University in Wellington New Zealand, he worked for a time as a scientific consultant to the New Zealand Department of Agriculture.

He took a second degree, this time in winemaking at Roseworthy Agricultural College in South Australia, where he also taught for some time before moving on to complete his Doctor of Philosophy for research into plant physiology at Queens College, Oxford University in 1965.

A residential college at Queens now carries the name “Carrodus Quad” in his honour.

Inspired by the elegance and sophistication of the wines he encountered at Oxford, Dr. Carrodus embarked on a study tour of the best vineyards and wineries of France, Spain, Portugal and Italy.

Afterwards, he took up a position at Melbourne University and began the search for a vineyard site on which to produce wine in the style he had grown to love. His search brought him to Victoria’s Yarra Valley.

Yarra Yering quickly gained an international reputation for quality and individuality and for the next 35 years Dr Carrodus made his wines to great critical and commercial success.

Dr Carrodus died at home in September 2008 and the vineyard was subsequently sold to two businessman, both passionate Yarra Yering fans. They have continued to operate this iconic vineyard with the same philosophy.

Frequently named among the top Yarra Valley wineries, Yarra Yering’s proud tradition is being continued to great acclaim by current winemaker Sarah Crowe.

Sarah, who was recently named James Halliday’s 2017 Winemaker of the Year, focuses on giving individual blocks and varieties the time and attention they deserve to continue making high-quality wine.

Yarra Yering Dry Red Wine No.1 - Hay Wines