Trust me. This Chook Block stuff is a wine to be taken seriously. Released only ephemerally, when winemaker Ben Riggs reckons the season was up to speed, the Chook Block is a McLaren Vale shiraz made from a relatively old (or young) 1967 planting across the road from the Wirra Wirra winery. It takes its unpretentious name from the broiler chicken sheds, of which one still remains, next to the vineyard itself. The best years for Chook Block are relatively generous years. Cropped at a little under four tonnes per acre, the 1998 vintage is a typical example. Lower crops distort its balance, so it becomes less of a complete wine and more of a blending component. It’s been made in 1991, 1994, 1998 and, fortunately, in 2001. Making Chook Block is ‘simple stuff’, according to Riggs. The wine is open fermented, basket pressed, given a decent spell in new and used French oak with a small American component, racked around five times to give it some aeration, egg fined, filtered (which automatically means this brilliant wine will be ostracised by a so-called learned few) and then bottled. Child’s play. Except a child could never have made this voluptuous, voluminous yet perfectly restrained and harmonious icon of McLaren Vale shiraz. The 1998 vintage (19.3, drink 2006-2010) is an ethereal wine which captures essence-like shiraz flavour, enhances it with reserved smoky oak and presents it set against the smoothest and finest of fruit and oak tannins. It’s velvet soft and smooth, with the impact of a stun grenade and the delicate tread of a ballet dancer. Available only from the cellar door, the Chook Block is rather limited. If you miss out on the 1998, think about placing an order for the 2001.
