Exclusive to Laithwaites
Thistledown Wizard & The Farmer Grenache 2023
A silky, fragrant Grenache from the house crowned Australia's Wine of the Year - bottled only for our customers
Exclusive Thistledown Wizard & The Farmer wines
Meet the winemaker: Giles Cooke
Thistledown is the work of Giles Cooke MW, a Scottish Master of Wine who splits his year between Edinburgh and Adelaide. A self-confessed Grenache obsessive with a deep love of Spain, he's hands-on in the truest sense, walking the vineyards and talking to growers in the lead-up to every vintage, and across everything from the picking calls to the label. His approach is refreshingly restrained: do as little as possible, let great sites speak, and coax perfume and texture into the glass rather than weight.
The vineyard
The fruit is drawn from a handful of old, dry-grown bush-vine sites across South Australia — the gnarled survivors of a variety that was once being pulled from the ground. Planted on warm, sandy, mineral-flecked soils and tended by growers Thistledown has worked with for years, these low-yielding vines give small crops of intensely flavoured, perfumed fruit. Picked early to hold their natural freshness and fine tannin, then blended across sites, they capture the pure, energetic character of South Australian Grenache.
