Massena / Jaysen Collins
Dan Standish and Jaysen Collins were college friends, and in the late 1990s they decided to put their talents together to produce wine. Recently, Jaysen Collins has taken charge of the "Massena" project on his own.The grapes are purchased from growers in Greenock, Kalimna and Koonunga Hill in the northwest Barossa Valley.
They are always very old plots and the yields are naturally tiny, but the grapes have an unequalled concentration and complexity. Despite the scorching dry summers, no irrigation is used (a method known as 'dry farming'). The Midnight Run, their first wine, was initially conceived as a wine for family and friends. Its name was inspired by their journeys between Barossa Valley and Clare Valley--during harvest they had to move from one to the other at night and it was then that they had the idea of working together. That blend was based on Grenache from vines over 120 years old. The remainder was Shiraz, Cinsault and Mataro (Mourvedre) in the style of the great Chateauneuf-du-Pape.
The Shiraz grapes for The Eleventh Hour come from a revered, if low yielding, plot in Greenock which was destined to be uprooted and replanted because no one was prepared to pay a higher price for the low yield. The name means 'the last minute', the two friends having saved these ancient Shiraz vines, in extremis, by blocking the bulldozers that had come to dig them up. Jaysen lets vinification take place naturally using indigenous yeasts without intervention. The style of Massena's wines is relatively elegant for the area. That doesn't mean that they have renounced the power and aromatic exuberance of the region, but a certain restraint and control over extraction bring both smoothness and tasting pleasure.
Producer
Cascina Barisél / Franco Penna
With just 5 hectares, Franco Penna's winery is small but exquisite. The estate near Canelli, east of Alba, comprises only the very best south-facing sites with calcareous soils. Franco's father Enrico, who bought the estate in the 1960s, obviously knew what he was doing.
Viñedos Terranoble
Soon after their arrival, the first Spanish colonists were already remarking the ideal vine growing conditions in Chile. In this country of great contrasts, embedded between the Andes and the Pacific Ocean, the many wine regions differ significantly through micro-climate, topography and altitudes, and geological properties. TerraNoble owns vineyards in three different regions and so can provide different varieties with the most suitable growing conditions.
Viñedos Lacalle y Laorden
In 2015 the two families of Zapiain and Lopez de Lacalle launched the Izar-Leku Mahastiak project (today Grupo Artadi) in Zarautz/Basque Country, with the aim of producing a table wine as well as a sparkling wine with Txakoli as the base wine. Today this sparkling wine is part of the "Viñedos Lacalle y Laorden" company - just like the premium single-vineyard wine "Viña El Pisón", though this wine comes from the Álava/Rioja region.