‘Kin by Alkina’ celebrates our community of makers, thinkers and artists. Over time we have understood which blocks and parcels can yield the perfect fruit for the approachable, varietal wines in this set. It has also given us the opportunity to expand our winemaking knowledge, particularly with whole bunch levels and extended skin contact. For these labels, we collaborated with artist and graphic designer, Damian Hamilton. 

The trio of Wild Earth, Night Sky and Birdsong show a step up in our fruit selection, diving into Polygon territory, older vines and the wonderful art of blending. Large canvases for these labels were created by Adnyamathanha artist Damien Coulthard, in which adorn the walls of Alkina. 

This blend of Grenache Shiraz Mataro allows us the opportunity to create great wines through combining different Polygons. The characteristics of the Old Quarter are underpinned by the Grenache from Polygon 4 which consists of schist and clay which is complemented with the lighter Grenache from Polygon 2 which contains hard schist and wind blown limestone. These components were blended with the Mataro from P6 and the Shiraz from P8 & P7.

Striato Shiraz was born in an incredibly exciting part of the vineyard named ‘Spice Garden’, just to the north of the ‘Old Quarter’. It is planted to Shiraz on different soils, with limestone, schist and clay each dominating in different areas. We mapped these polygons with Pedro Parra in 2018, wielding three fascinating parcels to work with - Polygon 10, Polygon 11 and Polygon 14.

Since the original release in 2020, we have started to included small amounts of other Polygons (including Polygon No. 1 on schist and quartzite) in the blend as we strive to make the best possible Shiraz that we can. The one thing that remains constant is that the fruit gown in the limestone of Polygon No. 10 always make up the base of this wine. As the sourcing has spread into other parts of the vineyard we have changed the name of the wine to ‘Striato’, which refers to the striations, or long narrow abrasions, created by the movement of a glacier.

There are three polygons that have, since the very early days, looked like they could stand apart as Single Polygon wines. Polygon 3 is 0.274 hectares (ha) and approximately 200 vines. Its soil profile is shallow red brown earth over deep chalky, sedimentary limestone which contains fractured schist and limited iron. Polygon 5 comprises two similar parcels of 0.12ha and 0.25ha, a total of 0.37ha. These Polygon 5 sections have deeper soils and well fractured schist with ferric clay (within the fractures).

Polygon 1 was defined in Pedro’s second visit in 2018. The block is 0.4ha which Pedro divided into separate areas and recommended that we exclude one section of 0.097ha which lacks the fractured schist of the other sections.

UPDATE FOR 2024 RELEASE: After extensive tasting and discussion we have decided to release the set of 2022 Polygons in the coming year instead of the 2021s. The primary reason for this is that we feel the 2022 Polygons are entering a beautiful window for release and we wanted to show off their vibrancy and vivid terroir expression. At the same time we have decided to delay the release of the 2021 vintage wines to a later date when we feel they will be ready. 2021 was a smaller, low-yielding, powerful and muscular vintage and we don’t believe the wines are ready yet.