Bulman Glen's Vineyard Grenache 2025

Bulman Glen's Vineyard Grenache 2025

Stonegarden Vineyard established in 1857. Thin loam over a substrate of red-brown clay covering sandstone with gold bearing quartz veins. Micaceous schist fragments scattered throughout. 390m Altitude. In the rain shadow of the Mount Lofty ranges on a plateau looking easterly over the Murray Mallee.

Wayne Boughdill grew the Grenache for the 2025 Vintage.

2025 Glen’s Vineyard Grenache – Picked on 5/3/25. 6% whole bunch. 10 Days on skins pre-ferment,18 day ferment, 37 days on skins post ferment. 172 days in a sandstone amphora.

The 2025 vintage was very dry and warm. A spring frost delayed vintage and reduced yield. The resultant wine has a strong core of fruit. The challenge of the vintage was to supress early opulent flavours and reserve them for a slow release over time. I feel I have done this.

"I opened both the new Bulman 2025 releases and did a quick assessment of both, just by smelling and swirling, no tasting. The Gary’s Vineyard release wins by a nose, so to speak, in that it’s so very expressive aromatically. When I came back maybe 90-120 minutes later and actually tasted them, I was surprised by the amount of expression on the Glen’s Vineyard – Eden Valley – release. That’s the one I’m focussing on here. In a very short period of time these wines have come to be a celebration of the vintage and of their region, I would argue. I also like the fact the winemaker Mark Bulman takes care of his loyal customers first, and goes to the media and the wider world second. On the subject of the former, they come from far and wide to attend the Bulman release dinner, held in the Barossa. If I had a bucket list, the Bulman release dinner would be on it.

Stonegarden Vineyard. Established 1857. Tended by Wayne Boughdill. 6% whole bunch.

I’m a sucker for a great grenache and this is a great grenache. As soon as I tasted it I could feel a river of Eden Valley schist rolling through my brain. This wine spent six months in a sandstone amphora and the purity of the fruit and the glimmer of mineral is strong. This wine tastes as though a sword has been pulled from a stone and then plunged deep into an ocean of red berries. I want to ride with it into battle or through to dawn or whatever comes last. There’s a crush of roasted spice notes mashed into the wine, a blackened billy full of metal and berries and licorice, a sense that oxygen is scare, a sense that that the wine is sucking in on itself in order to make it all last. It’s mid weight in Grenache terms, which is light-ish to the wider world. Mid or light matters not. Everything in this wine stays around and presses in until you’re convinced. The tannin is fine and gritty and grapey and ground. Some wines you taste. Some wines you sink into. This wine, I fell in behind. I am biased towards Blewitt Springs and to McLaren Vale. But this Eden Valley wine, and those which have preceded it, have forged me into a Glen’s Vineyard animal." 96 Points - Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front