Torbreck Vintners to sell a new vineyard wine for $850 a bottle

After more than a decade of work, this super premium Barossa winery is launching a new icon, single vineyard wine with a price tag usually only seen at Penfolds.

Super premium Barossa winery Torbreck Vintners is launching a new icon, single vineyard wine into the market next month – the culmination of more than a decade of work.

Torbreck’s “The Forebear” will go on sale in limited release from May 1, with the 1200 bottles produced priced at $850 apiece.

The price puts it at the same level as the winery’s flagship wine, The Laird, and slightly below Penfolds Grange, which is now priced at $1000 per bottle on release.

The Forebear comes from the winery’s tiny Hillside Vineyard, comprised of just 12 rows of vines on a one acre plot, planted by Samuel Springbett and his sons in about 1850.

Torbreck acquired the vineyard in 2002, and the winemaking and viticulture team spent more than a decade nurturing the vines back to health before deciding to make a wine.

Torbreck chief winemaker Ian Hongell said that in 2019 they finally decided the time was right to make a wine from the plot.

Torbreck chief winemaker Ian Hongell. Picture: Supplied

“We’ve watched as the years have rolled by that this vineyard has continued to improve, to a point that in 2019, we decided to make a wine from this one site,” Mr Hongell said.

“What this wine represents is the capturing of over 170 years of vine age in a single wine from a single place.

“By making this wine, we want to show how the ancient vines and the lineage back to the European source … can be expressed in a wine and the differences that these old vines have.”

Mr Hongell said the 2019 vintage was very low-yield and concentrated.

“So it’s quite a statement wine as a result of those low yields. It has immense power, and it has also great beauty.

“The wine has lots of red fruit, and really sort of captures the density and volume that Barossa shiraz can show.”

The wine was aged for two years in French oak and then three years in the bottle.

The tasting notes for the wine suggest drinking from 2026 and cellaring out to 2050.

“A complex nose of mostly red berry fruits such as red currant, red cherry and cassis fill the bouquet, complemented by savoury notes of wild thyme, garrigue, graphite, and sandalwood,” the notes say.

“The palate carries a wonderful textural mouthfeel with enveloping soft, round tannins and cleansing acidity that balance the wines modern Barossa elegance with the power of the harvest from extremely low yielding vines.”