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〜HISTORY〜 オフィシャル・ホームページから
Described in 1830 by mineralogist and explorer Johannes Menge as “the cream, the whole cream and nothing but the cream”, the Barossa Valley has been a wine region since 1842. Newly arrived Prussians, Germans and Silesians established vineyards that would ultimately realise the Barossa’s potential as one of the world’s great wine regions. Some of those vines still grow and bear fruit today, yielding wines that stand among the very best in the world.
Dave Powell was just nineteen when he first made wine in the Barossa Valley. After working extensively abroad, building winemaking expertise in Italy, France and North America, Dave returned home to work with Barossa Valley stalwarts Yalumba, Peter Lehmann, Wolf Blass, Saltram and Rockford. Over those ten years Dave developed the personal style that has come to characterise his own unique style of wines.
In 1992, Dave began searching for vineyards to form the foundation of his own label. Knowing that the key to great Barossan wine lay in its ancient vines, he scoured the valley to find promising old vineyards. He found them – original vines a hundred years old or more, dry-grown and planted on their own roots, on the slopes of the North-Western ridge that reflected the ideal Barossan terroir. They were in a state of complete neglect, overgrown and untended for many years. Indeed the owner of one of the vineyards had planned to uproot the vines and turn the paddock over to grazing. Fortunately Dave managed to convince him otherwise, and spent the coming years in backbreaking toil, using only hand tools, rejuvenating sacred old vines across five sites in the Western Barossa.
On the morning of the 14th of April, 1994, the first Powell wine was born as Dave pressed his first ever tonne of Shiraz, from Marcus Schulz’s vineyard in the Northern Barossa, using his one tonne hand-press. On that same day Dave’s first son Callum made his entry to the world, late that afternoon. Perhaps the timing of his birth sealed Callum’s fate – growing up among the vines and in the winemaking sheds in sunny Marananga on the Valley floor and high, cool Flaxman’s Valley, Callum never imagined he would become anything but a winemaker.
Callum and Dave worked together throughout Callum’s childhood. When Callum finished school, he followed his father’s trail to the Rhone Valley, rediscovering the same techniques and passion that Dave had uncovered more than two decades before. Working under Jean-Louis Chave in Hermitage, Callum began to develop his own unique winemaking style.
It had always been father and sons’ intention to make wine together, and in 2014 they made their dreams reality with the foundation of Powell & Son. Honouring the Barossa and Eden Valleys, and the people who planted the vines almost two hundred years before, Powell & Son wines reflect the vineyard from which they come.
After three decades of working with Barossan vineyards, Callum and Dave now source fruit from only six vineyards for their single vineyard wines. They believe that these six vineyards are some of the Barossa’s great sites as they are unique in their expression of varietal character and sub-regional terroir.
The Powell & Son wines consist of three red varieties: Shiraz from the Barossa and Eden Valleys, and Grenache and Mataro from the Barossa Valley – the whites: an elegant Riesling from Eden Valley and a blend of Roussanne and Marsanne from the Barossa Valley. Employing a minimalist, pared-back winemaking philosophy, the Powells produce wines with power and elegance, showcasing the distinctive districts throughout the Barossa – itself consisting of two equal and opposite regions; the Barossa Valley and the Eden Valley – which work together in perfect harmony.
The Barossa & Eden Valleys Shiraz intertwines the Barossa Valley’s power and depth with the Eden Valley’s elegance and finesse – Eden’s yin to the Barossa’s yang.
The Barossa Valley Grenache Shiraz Mataro highlights these great varietals and their long respected connection with one another. This wine is greater than the sum of its parts, combining the strengths of all three varieties together into a perfect whole.
The Powell & Son single vineyard wines celebrate the unique expression of their vineyard sites, and the wine’s name pays respect to their original Barossan planters. These wines open windows into very special Barossan microclimates, yielding wines of trememdous character, each with a personality all its own.
Callum and Dave work all of the vineyards they source fruit from themselves, understanding that vine health is paramount and that great wines are made in the vineyard. Their viticultural philosophy is similar to their winemaking, allowing the vines to grow natually to express their true characters. Dry grown vines pruned by the rod and spur and bush vine methods achieve maximum fruit quality, essential to making great wine.
The results are wines that speak of their birthplaces, driving the expanding notion of Australian terroir and promoting the brilliant patchwork of plantings that together make up the complex and integrated whole that is the Barossa.
When visiting the winery recently Lisa Perrotti-Brown of the Wine Advocate asked Dave about the 2015 Vintage, and she writes:
“2015 was near perfect and gave decent yeilds” He grins, in typical Dave Powell fashion daring me to disagree. I can’t; the barrel sample tasting I conducted with Powell of his 2015s revealed some incredibly exciting wines in the pipeline.
Note that while I didn’t produce a note for them, a barrel tasting of the 2015 vintage of the Steinert and the new single vineyard Shiraz from Marananga revealed two very profound wines.
Dave Powell is back.
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