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When you’re in the mood for:
Dark cherry • earthy spice • lingers, doesn’t shout
Mataro gave us two moods in 2025. This is the barrel-aged one.
Same grower, same season, different patch of the Willoughby Bridge vineyard — and suddenly we were dealing with a deeper, softer, earthier version of the same grape. Not wildly bigger. Just more settled. A bit more dark cherry than raspberry. A bit more savoury than bright. A bit more “sit down, we’re not rushing this.”
In the glass, think dark cherry, earthy spice and a faint gamey edge. The tannins are fine, the oak sits quietly in the background, and the finish hangs around without elbowing its way through dinner.
We aged it in neutral barrels with medium-toast American oak inserts, then freshened the final blend with a small amount of unoaked wine from the same parcel. That little splash brought back some fruit lift and stopped the wine getting too comfortable in the armchair.
This is the Mataro for slower glasses: grilled portobello mushrooms, chargrilled veg, lamb, duck, kangaroo, hard cheese, or the kind of evening where the wine gets to hang around a bit.
One of the reasons we’re bottling two Mataros from 2025 is because blending them away would have missed the point.
Same grape. Same grower. Same season. But not the same wine.
This parcel came from a different part of the Willoughby Bridge vineyard and was picked only eight days after our earlier Mataro, but it landed in a very different place: around 15 Baumé, with more ripeness, more softness and more of the earthy side we were curious about. Handy reminder that vineyards are farms, not spreadsheets.
This was the version we wanted to send through barrel, but we still didn’t want oak taking over. Neutral barrels gave the wine somewhere to settle, and medium-toast American oak inserts added shape and savoury interest without turning the glass into a furniture showroom.
Later, we blended in a small amount of unoaked wine from the same parcel. Not much — just enough to bring back a little fruit lift and stop the barrel-aged wine getting too comfortable in its own chair.
I’m still curious to see where this one goes with a bit more bottle time. Right now, it’s softer, earthier and more settled than its earlier-picked sibling, but not trying to be a huge red. More slow glass than show pony.
That’s the fun of the 2025 Mataro experiment: rosé, earlier-picked red, barrel-aged red. Same grape, three completely different moods.
