Family Article
Kay Brothers Shiraz Block 6 Amery Vineyards
Last edited on 7/17/2021 by LindsayM
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Long held in high esteem as one of McLaren Vale’s finest Shiraz plantings, Block 6 Shiraz continues the tradition at Kay Brothers of producing full bodied red wines that have the grace and pedigree to age for decades. Handpicked and fermented in the original open top fermenters, Block 6 Shiraz is a wine of great strength, deep complexity and amazing vibrancy. The Block 6 vineyard faces east and rows run north south with significant undulation. The vines are cane pruned with the canes wrapped onto the top wire of the low lying trellis. The present 1.5 hectares comprises a corner of red loam, some heavy clay in the middle of the block and gravelly alluvial soils on the lower side. The underlying “South Maslin Sands” geology is extremely complex containing layers of glauconite, limestone, sandstone and siltstone.
It begins in the vineyard
OUR Block 6 vineyard is our pride and joy, a direct connection to the brothers who so laboriously brought about our winery and wines. With that pride comes plenty of intricate planning to care for vines of such venerable age.
With vines of such age, Duncan and our vineyard team practice a technique called Layering, something many wineries with similarly ancient vines employ. Where there
is an individual vine death, we take a water shoot from
the trunk of the neighbouring vine and after 2 years bury
this cane, consequently training it up onto the trellis. The replacement vine is an extension from the trunk of the “mother vine” next to it, and the cane linking the two vines is referred to as the “umbilical cord”. We never cut the umbilical cord, which will eventually rot out after many decades.
Maintenance of this special vineyard includes careful hand pruning in the winter. It takes at least 5 years to learn how to prune the gnarly old vines. Because
they are so old, each vine has a unique growth habit, and is pruned individually to suit its vigour potential. This ensures each vine will maintain balanced growth during the season and ultimately produce fruit that
will be crafted into wine of the quality we are proud to produce under the Block 6 label.
To capture the concentrated intensity of these ancient vines, our team also practice shoot thinning. When shoots are approximately 10-15 cm long
our team manually remove excess shoots
where there may be more than one growing
from a bud. This ensures the eventual fruit of
each vine is not diluted into many shoots, but concentrated in the selected few.
Finally, to cater to the fragile vines, our Block 6 vineyard is hand-picked, ensuring no vine is damaged and all the fruit is kept in the best condition possible.
Handcrafted in the winery
Once the Block 6 fruit reaches the winery, our team keeps things very hands on, not wanting to lose any of the fruit quality so carefully nurtured in the vineyard.
The juice is left on skins during fermentation for a minimum of 10 days to extract the flavour, colour and tannin to highlight the characters unique to this special vineyard.
When the wine is ready for oak, we use only 500L puncheons in high quality oak, specifically with a tighter grain structure. The wine is aged for a minimum of 20 months in oak to allow optimum integration between fruit and oak, so that the wine achieves the ultimate level of elegance, poise and balance.
It begins in the vineyard
OUR Block 6 vineyard is our pride and joy, a direct connection to the brothers who so laboriously brought about our winery and wines. With that pride comes plenty of intricate planning to care for vines of such venerable age.
With vines of such age, Duncan and our vineyard team practice a technique called Layering, something many wineries with similarly ancient vines employ. Where there
is an individual vine death, we take a water shoot from
the trunk of the neighbouring vine and after 2 years bury
this cane, consequently training it up onto the trellis. The replacement vine is an extension from the trunk of the “mother vine” next to it, and the cane linking the two vines is referred to as the “umbilical cord”. We never cut the umbilical cord, which will eventually rot out after many decades.
Maintenance of this special vineyard includes careful hand pruning in the winter. It takes at least 5 years to learn how to prune the gnarly old vines. Because
they are so old, each vine has a unique growth habit, and is pruned individually to suit its vigour potential. This ensures each vine will maintain balanced growth during the season and ultimately produce fruit that
will be crafted into wine of the quality we are proud to produce under the Block 6 label.
To capture the concentrated intensity of these ancient vines, our team also practice shoot thinning. When shoots are approximately 10-15 cm long
our team manually remove excess shoots
where there may be more than one growing
from a bud. This ensures the eventual fruit of
each vine is not diluted into many shoots, but concentrated in the selected few.
Finally, to cater to the fragile vines, our Block 6 vineyard is hand-picked, ensuring no vine is damaged and all the fruit is kept in the best condition possible.
Handcrafted in the winery
Once the Block 6 fruit reaches the winery, our team keeps things very hands on, not wanting to lose any of the fruit quality so carefully nurtured in the vineyard.
The juice is left on skins during fermentation for a minimum of 10 days to extract the flavour, colour and tannin to highlight the characters unique to this special vineyard.
When the wine is ready for oak, we use only 500L puncheons in high quality oak, specifically with a tighter grain structure. The wine is aged for a minimum of 20 months in oak to allow optimum integration between fruit and oak, so that the wine achieves the ultimate level of elegance, poise and balance.