Frustrated at not being in control of their own fruit as they watched it trucked away to other wineries, Norm Doole and Drew Dowie opened a bottle of red over breakfast and decided to form a partnership, the purpose of which was to take complete charge of their grapes and to make their own wines. Five tonnes parcels of McLaren Vale Shiraz are picked at healthy levels of ripeness and treated to a few days of cold soak, batches are crushed and vinified for up to three weeks in traditional fat boy fermenters. An extended term of skin contact is followed by pressing into French oak barrels for completion of malolactic and several rackings over the course of eighteen months maturation.