After Five Wine Co. Single Vineyard Montepulciano 2022

Doing vintage, you can’t help but have permanently purple hands. The red colouring and tannins seep into your pores and as your hands crack and glaze, become a temporary and changing tattoo, a memento of working with your hands in wine. It takes a few weeks after vintage has finished for the purple stain to fade… Our favourite pairs of purple hands belong to Craig Stansborough, chief winemaker for Grant Burge, and Mark Slade who own a tiny Barossa winery called Purple Hands. Quality of the wines is utterly exceptional; made by purple hands and guaranteed to stain your tongue black. We have the ‘15 reds and while reviews are still pending, we can tell you that given their 2012, 2013 and 2014s averaged a staggering 96 points from James Halliday, we are quietly confident these will end up in that same territory. Craig and Mark buy in some fruit however they grow the bulk of their own fruit in the cooler, southern end of the Barossa, allowing them to produce powerful and fruit intense wines

Just 60km northeast of Adelaide, the Barossa Valley is one of Australia's oldest wine regions.