Single Site range: Home Block Cabernet Sauvignon
Rich, elegant and full-bodied: A representation of Coonawarra
Home Block is an award-winning 2015 Cabernet Sauvignon, produced from vines surrounding the Tocaciu family home. It is a single vineyard parcel grown on terra rossa soil from vines planted in 1960.
Home Block was the first wine that Pat released for the family business. It shows the true essence of Coonawarra – rich, dark berry fruits and elegant tannins.
THE TOCACIU FAMILY HOME BLOCK
Home Block is a special wine to the Tocaciu family. Winemaker Luke Tocaciu explains,
“Home Block is the block of vineyards around our family home, just down the road from our cellar door. It’s a one hectare vineyard, so it’s quite small. It grows great fruit but not in huge quantities. The vines are an average age of 60 years old, all Cabernet Sauvignon.
It’s the first vineyard that we purchased with the family home when Dad moved down to Coonawarra in 1989. So he had been making wine from that vineyard for a long time.
Home Block is a single vineyard of just Cabernet Sauvignon. It was planted in three different blocks, with the original block in the middle, then we planted at the side of the house and then at the back of the house as well. We treat the three blocks within that one vineyard differently and keep them separately in the winery.
We also grow the different parts of the vineyard a bit differently. The front of the vineyard is a double cordon, with two fruiting wires. The vine grows up to one wire and then across and then up to another wire, which gives you more surface area to grow the fruit. The rest of the vineyard is standard single wire trellis.
With the two wires, you can plant the vines a lot closer together and therefore produce more fruit, but they require different treatment to a regular vineyard, the canopy needs to be managed. By mid-summer, the vines can be really bushy and touch each other across the rows, therefore we have foliage wires that we lift up each side and to move the foliage out of the way and expose some of the fruit to sunlight; we need light (the right amount) on the bunches for flavour to develop.
I grew up working in the vineyard. I earned my pocket money pruning, lifting wires, fixing sprinklers and things like that, so it’s the vineyard that I’ve spent the most time in and has always been my favourite.
I have an intimate understanding of the vineyard, row by row, which is key when making a wine like Home Block."
A PERFECT REPRESENTATION OF COONAWARRA
Luke says, “Cabernet Sauvignon is my favourite variety to grow and make. One reason is because Cabernet is the hallmark of Coonawarra. Everyone strives to make the best example of Cabernet they can.
It is also a very site specific wine and has a different character depending on where it’s grown, which is an interesting part of making Cabernet.
If someone is new to Patrick and they want to try one of the Patrick wines as an introduction, I would definitely recommend the Home Block. It is a good representation of our region and the single vineyards within our region. You can't go past Coonawarra Cabernet and Home Block is a perfect example of what our region does.”
Click here for more information about Home Block.
Explore the other bottles in the Single Site range in our blog post here. You can purchase the Single Site range here.
If you would like read about Luke's insights on the other two exceptional wines in the new Single Site range in more detail, delve into our blog posts on Joanna and Block 5.
