We recently received the delightful Newsletter from Rae and Drew at Noon winery, which included the following notes regarding the highly anticipated 2024 vintage. If you would like to read the full Newsletter, please click here. Their website is also full of great information if you are wanting to know more. We look forward to receive these lovely wines in the late Spring of 2026.
2024 Noon Eclipse
What a pretty and refined Eclipse we have this year. It demonstrates the legitimacy of the claim that Grenache is like warm-climate Pinot Noir. It has a wonderful roundness of texture in the mouth and fills your palate with soft fruit flavour. It also reflects the conditions of the vintage clearly; possessing a lighter colour than usual due to the larger crop and the cooler summer. But the purity of fruit is beautiful and the silky mouthfeel is divine. A very attractive wine for drinking now through until 2030+. Produced from 92% Grenache, 4% Shiraz and 4% Graciano
PS Good to know… Eclipse production from 2025 was half that of this release due to the drought so we will have to tighten the limit next year.
2024 Reserve Shiraz
It’s good to have this wine back after missing a vintage last year and what a great return! Not for the faint hearted, as the Shiraz crop this year was very small and it shows in the concentration of flavour in this wine. It remains beautifully balanced and easy to drink though, despite its size. It delivers a lot of everything whilst remaining stylish and civilized. Impressive. If you love full bodied reds, I think you’re going to love this! Produced from Langhorne Creek Shiraz from the Borrett’s 20 Rows block (65%) and Outback block (35%).
2024 Reserve Cabernet
Another lovely wine, from a much-reduced crop this year. It’s the pristine fruit flavour that is special about this. And there’s plenty of depth, as well as structure for cellaring if that’s your inclination. It looks like a first-class Cabernet release. In fact, I’d put it amongst our best. Don’t miss it if you love your Cab. Produced from Langhorne Creek Cabernet from the Borrett’s Bore (70%) and Fruit Trees blocks (30%).
2024 The Vintage- mild but dry, turning out beautiful wines
This was a very good quality harvest, with the size of the crop divided between above average for
Grenache at McLaren Vale, to very small for Shiraz and Cabernet at Langhorne Creek.
As usual, the weather explains everything. It was a wet start to winter in June but then drier than average right through most of spring. The sub-soil started fairly wet from the previous season so the dry spring wasn’t a problem and the vines grew fast, without mildew worries. Then November arrived and the weather became a little crazy! The south east winds were persistently strong and we had one unusually hot day on November 10 when it reached 40 degrees in Adelaide, though fortunately the cellar door open days remained mild as you may remember. Then there was quite heavy rain in the last week of the month. This was particularly concerning because November is the flowering period and we always hope for calm, settled conditions at this time. My diary entry ahead of the forecast hot day on the 10th says “v. hot day forecast will it affect the set?” Along with the winds and the wet weather which followed, it did! Except, strangely, for Grenache. The crops were well below average at Langhorne Creek on both the Shiraz and Cabernet. Why the Grenache at home sailed through is a bit of a mystery because it is a fussy variety when it comes to flowering and will usually set badly at the slightest provocation. This year it set a good-sized crop despite the conditions. I think drought seems to impact the Grenache set more than others and the good sub-soil moisture must have kept it happy. Whatever the reason, we were glad to have it!
Significant rain in the second week of December made us nervous about mildew but this proved to be a one-off event. The dry, mild summer conditions which followed were ideal for quality. At this stage, it looked as though we were heading for another later harvest, until March suddenly turned quite warm, with 9 consecutive days over 30 degrees from the 5th to the 13th. Combined with a small crop, this brought the Shiraz on early and we needed to move quickly from the 10th of March to start harvesting. With the hot weather, we started picking early and finished around lunch time each day to avoid the worst of the heat.
At Langhorne Creek, the crop proved even smaller than we thought but we were fortunate that the Borretts were able to let us have some precious grapes from an adjoining block to top up, as they have in some other lean years past. So, despite the small crops the quantity of Reserve Shiraz and Cabernet we have been able to produce this year is only slightly below average. Thank you, George and Johnny.
At McLaren Vale, with the vines carrying a bigger crop which takes more sunshine to ripen, we were lucky to have the burst of early March heat to move things along. We waited a little before we began harvesting Grenache for Eclipse on 18 March and finished on the 26th. We left some grapes out at BJs for Tawny, which we picked on April 1, after first picking all of the Cabernet at Langhorne Creek that morning…it was a big day!
We’re very happy with the wines. The Eclipse is very pure and refined, the Reserve Shiraz is really big and full of flavour and the Reserve Cabernet is also a beauty.
We hope you’ll enjoy them!
Drew Noon
