Hayes Family Wines Smart Vineyard Grenache 2022

Hayes Family Wines is a small, family-owned producer based in Stone Well, on the Western Ridge of the Barossa Valley. The label was founded by Brett Hayes, a Brisbane-born former business consultant who spent decades visiting the Barossa before finally buying the Stone Well vineyard and launching the label in 2014 — with the property itself dating back to 1948 and having changed hands some 18 times since the 1860s.

Winemaking is led by Andrew Seppelt, a long-time friend of Brett's and something of Barossa wine royalty — he's been making wine in the region since 1995, including a stint as GM and winemaker at Torbreck, and brings over 25 years of experience to Hayes' small-batch, low-intervention approach. The Estate Vineyard, tended by viticulturist Mandy Madar, is fully Certified Organic and Certified Sustainable, with old, dry-grown vines (some over 70 years old) producing small, concentrated crops of Shiraz, Grenache, Mataro and other Barossa mainstays on tough, well-drained loam and gravel soils.

Hayes farms with a genuine ecosystem mindset — including using Indian Runner ducks for natural pest control — and lets each site and vintage speak for itself rather than chasing a house style. The wines have carried a five-star rating in the James Halliday Wine Companion every year since the label began.

Sourced from the Smart Vineyard in Clarendon, with just 670 bottles produced.

This is a more robust, muscular expression of Smart — partly a reflection of the vintage, though it's also a wine that doesn't shy away from extract and power. On the nose, dark raspberry and dried flower perfume meet dark chocolate, mint and spice. The palate is full-bodied, carrying a savoury black tea character alongside blackberry and raspberry fruit, backed by firm acidity and plenty of chewy, grippy tannin — almost modernist Barolo in its structure. The finish is dry and tannic, with good length and a touch of orange peel bitterness to close. A genuinely intriguing wine — one that could evolve in real interesting directions with time in the cellar, though which way it goes remains to be seen.