Audrey`s Fairygarten Shiraz 2019

I love cooking, music, drawing and vinification as each of these sensual activities I can do on my own or share with family and friends to create tangible, visible and audible representations of the spirit behind the world which forms me.” So says James Erskine, brains and brawn behind Jauma (the Catalan version of James), and Natural Theory Selection conspirator.

 Each of the vineyards he works with is harvested by hand using only the most sophisticated of grape analysis instruments to select the time of harvest – the senses; no Ph meters or Baume refractometry, here, my friends. His primary passion is working with Grenache (Pinot of the south!) from the McLaren Vale sub-appellation Blewitt Springs but given that he lives in the Adelaide hills he also pays homage to, not Catalonia, but a few of the more interesting growers he has encountered there and produced a couple of locally grown wines. He says that he feels very lucky to have been able to set up a cellar in one of the original, basket range sandstone buildings built in 1841 just around the corner from his family home which formerly housed the Crammond family’s Jam Factory. No quips about jammy Barossa reds here. In the cellar, all ferments are wild and each vineyard’s wine is made without the addition of sulphur, enzymes, fining agents, acid or tannins. None of the wines are filtered or fined and no sulphur was added until bottling when a minimal addition is made to give James the confidence to ship his wines interstate and internationally. The cellar has multiple stories so he is able to work using gravity rather than pumps. By trusting his own palate in the cellar rather than technical instruments he is able to follow and guide the will of each vineyard, the aim being to produce wines that capture both the essence of each vineyard and “my own personal, creative energies”.