In 1994 due to a more than abundant crop, Duck filled the winery with grapes, fermenting in anything that didn’t leak!
This meant leaving part of one row of Shiraz unpicked in the Original Vineyard. As luck would have it, Duck forgot that these grapes existed until a good friend and fellow Shiraz-lover, David McKee, discovered them three weeks after vintage. The grapes were still in remarkably good condition, albeit a little over-ripe.
David McKee insisted that these wines be made separately. He bought a new barrel, and like Duck; gave most of his share away. Only later it was discovered to be quite an extraordinary wine!
A masterful explosion of contradictions, merging in harmony and captured in a bottle!

Duck Muck was first made by a stroke of luck. Some super-ripe Shiraz was picked and made into wine, which didn’t quite fill a barrel. The barrel was then topped up with Alan’s Cabernet Pressings, being the only wine available to David (Duck) at that time in 1994. The resulting wine was given away to their best customers. What David didn’t appreciate at the time was how the blend of these two vineyards, and that specific style, was going to create a wine that was not only of world class quality, but gain cult status all over the world.
With a few refinements, Duck Muck is possibly the hardest wine for Wild Duck Creek to make. The vineyards are meticulously attended to. Cane pruned, shoot thinned, and fruit thinned to try and achieve the perfect balance in any particular vintage. The fruit is then picked and partly destemmed into small open top fermenters. The Original Vineyard Shiraz having 30% whole bunches left in the ferment. The wine is then gently basket pressed into 100% new Dominique Laurent barriques and matured for up to 27 months. Duck Muck when bottled is extraordinarily intense, with layers of texture, wonderfully complex aroma, and incredible length and depth.

The remarkable Duck Muck is so densely packed with fruit and tannins, it is almost as solid as panne forte. It is a wine that Dave “Duck” Anderson would describe as an “ambulance induced wine”, a “firecracker in a glass” or a wine that would “wound you”. Duck Muck is hardly a shrinking violet. It’s more like an explosive that promises to rip off the lining of your mouth. No doubt on a freezing cold night it would warm your cockles but at $1000 a bottle during it’s hey day it would be cheaper buying a heater!

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