Hayes Family Ebenezer Grenache Prayer Garden 2022

2022 will be remembered as the second near-faultless Barossa Valley vintage in a row, following an equally impressive but very different 2021 — both among the coolest seasons since 2002. Good spring rains left healthy soil moisture heading into the growing season, followed by a warm, dry run that produced balanced, healthy canopies and an average-sized crop of exceptionally high-quality fruit. It's arguably one of the best back-to-back vintages the Barossa has seen since 1990/91, if not longer — vibrant colour and flavour in the reds, real lift in the whites, and outstanding overall quality.

The Prayer Garden is a special site — dry-grown, very old bush vines on a tiny 2-acre lost block in Ebenezer, in the Northern Barossa, planted generations ago. Like its neighbour Glengrae, it's farmed the traditional way, with no supplementary water, and sits highly exposed to frost in most years. The name comes from the vines' short stature — picking or pruning here means kneeling to approach them, as if in prayer. It's hard, physical work, but it pays off in the glass.

The fruit is hand-picked late in the season, destemmed, and fermented on skins for close to 20 days before being transferred to seasoned puncheons for maturation. The result is a highly perfumed, medium-bodied Grenache — beautifully balanced, with red fruit, fine tannin and bright acidity all working in harmony. A genuinely lovely expression of the variety.