Koomilya is the name of a 12-hectare vineyard at the end of Amery Road in the heart of McLaren Vale, purchased several years ago by winemaker Stephen Pannell. "When I was at Hardy’s, the fruit we got off this vineyard was superb, and one of the wines I made from it won the Jimmy Watson Trophy [at the Royal Melbourne Wine Show], so I jumped at the opportunity of buying it when it came up," he explains. First planted in the late 1800s, the combination of unusually sandy soils and old vine fruit gives an aromatic lift to the wines, setting them apart from the crowd.
Koomilya has the potential to become one of Australia’s most sought-after vineyards. “The wines illustrate what I‘m hoping modern McLaren Vale wine will be, which harks back to a tradition of what it looked like in the 1960s, without all the artifice of winemaking,” says Stephen. Above all, the wines convey an exciting, honest sense of place.
"It’s so nice to see these Block wines consistently show true to site, while also naturally fluctuating with the vintage. The DC is always the most traditional of feel – of intensity and fruit flavour – of the triad of wines, but it’s as effortless, as delightfully free of artefact as the other wines. Deep of fruit, brooding, but never sweet or rich with it. Just a wine of thrumming presence with a bloody ferrousness, feeling of those ironstone-laced soils, old vines and that distinctive Upper Tintara bush block. There’s a character in all the wines that feels of that place, of the earth and the bush in the warmth of summer, but not of eucalypt, of mintiness, just of the scent of that serene place. An excellent wine." 96pts Marcus Ellis Halliday Wine Companion
