Flagstone Strata The Shindig Shiraz 2000

The Shindig Shiraz is not the only wine from Flagstone Winery to have an unusual name - or a special story behind the label.

The monikers on winemaker Bruce Jack's wines are all unusual: Longitude; the Music Room Cabernet Sauvignon, Free Run Sauvignon Blanc, Heywood House barrel fermented Sauvignon Blanc, Noon Gun; Two Roads Chardonnay and so on.

 

The Celtic word "shindig" means a large, lively party, something the Flagstone crew are known to be partial to. But what's the full story behind The Shindig Shiraz?

"There's no one thing - rather a number of different elements," Jack says. "The Shindig is part of our Strata series (a range of once-off or experimental wines) because we knew we would only ever be able to make it once."

The wine originated from a special parcel of beautiful old Shiraz vines in Stellenbosch. "The vineyard," explains Jack, "was in dispute during a divorce settlement. The courts couldn't decide whether to award the fruit to the husband or the wife - meanwhile the fruit was ripening nicely. The attorney was a friend of mine and I ended up buying the parcel of fruit. Normally it goes to a top Shiraz producer, so I knew it was only ever going to be a once-off."

The word "shindig has stuck in Jack's head "from when I was a child".

His mother is Scots in origin and her family hails from the Isle of Tyree, a tiny island in the Outer Hebrides.

"I remember our whole family arriving by ferry in the early afternoon - and being swept off to the Town Hall, where the entire town had turned out to meet 'the family from Africa!'

"At 2 o' clock in the afternoon the Scottish cousins broke out the whisky and kicked off a huge party - and even I had to drink some! As a 12-year-old I remember thinking it the foulest stuff I'd ever tasted… but throughout the afternoon's festivities all these gnarled and wizened old aunties would come over and in their broad Scots accents ask if I was enjoying the shindig. That's always stuck with me."

The wine proved itself worthy of the title from an early stage, he maintains, being beautifully drinkable in barrel.

"We bled off about 20% of the juice before fermentation to concentrate the flavours and colours - and then put 80% of it into new wood.

"It was a lovely wine with beaut fruit and concentration and we used any excuse to go to the barrel. We must have drunk about 10% of the entire production (only 500 cases) before we bottled it… We'd take chemical beakers out the lab or jugs and fill it up with a barrel sample - and we'd have a little shindig."