Hayes Family Grenache Koonunga Vineyard 2022

Hayes Family Wines is a small, family-owned producer based in Stone Well, on the Western Ridge of the Barossa Valley. Founded by Brett Hayes and helmed by winemaker Andrew Seppelt — a Barossa veteran with over 25 years' experience, including a stint as GM and winemaker at Torbreck — the label is built on old, dry-grown vineyards farmed with minimal intervention, letting each site and vintage speak for itself. The Estate Vineyard is Certified Organic and Certified Sustainable, and Hayes has carried a five-star rating in the James Halliday Wine Companion every year since launching.

Ian Becker's old bush block in Koonunga feels caught in time — farmed by Ian Becker and his family for generations, in an isolated spot that quietly produces exceptional fruit, year after year. Adrian Hoffman took over management of the vineyard for the 2020 vintage, continuing to farm it essentially as it was 100 years ago: dry-grown bush vines, naturally low-cropping, with no modern shortcuts.

The fruit was hand-picked, destemmed and transferred to small fermenters, where it spent close to 20 days on skins. Once fermentation finished, the wine moved into older French oak puncheons for 9 months before bottling. Just 1,350 bottles were produced from this parcel — this bottle numbered 1299 of 1350.

This is a medium-to-full red with a hint of purple at the rim, and a genuinely striking nose — herbal notes, cola, Campari, sweet cherry liqueur, with a whisper of whole-bunch character running through a superb range of aromatics. Highly perfumed and intensely fruit-driven on the palate, it's full-bodied and firmly tannic, powerful and emphatic, with real drive and persistence, yet balanced enough to suggest genuine cellaring potential. Impressive already, though it may want another year or so to fully knit together — and with the right cellaring, it has a big future ahead of it.