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.
The ‘DC Block’ Shiraz is the most tannic wine Stephen makes. Open-top fermentation and an extended maceration create a wine with finely woven, tightly knit tannins that carry the intense fruit through the palate. This wine is elegant and powerful, with superb length. The ‘GT Block’ comes from a single block of 32-year-old Shiraz vines grafted on Gewürztraminer. Defined by blackberry, spice and violet, savoury undertones and fine tannins, it is a complex wine with many layers that command attention.
"Native ferment with 16 days on skins; maturation in a 2300L oak vat. There really are no other wines that taste like the Koomilya shiraz triad, being utterly individual and beguiling wines of place. This, my pick of the vintage. The three block wines are kindred but aptly singular, this with some of the succulence and girth of the DC and the relative levity of the GT, bound with more spice and intense compression than either. Deep, brooding, almost bottomless, but it’s no cudgel. Dusky red fruits and florals, a deep red cherry scent, blood and iron, licorice, tar, turned humus-rich soil, dried hardy herbs, and an invigorating sour-fruit-flavoured twang escorting the supple fruit with sublimely fine, grapey tannins. It’s one heck of a wine." 98pts Gold Marcus Ellis Halliday Wine Companion 2025
