2024 Bulman Wines Gary's Vineyard Grenache | 97 Point McLaren Vale Grenache

🏆 97 HALLIDAY | 96 WINE FRONT | ONE OF AUSTRALIA'S MOST EXCITING NEW GRENACHES

One of Australia's Most Exciting New Grenache Producers

Gary's Vineyard is a seriously exciting expression of where modern Australian Grenache

97 Points – Halliday Wine Companion
96 Points – The Wine Front

Blewitt Springs, McLaren Vale, South Australia

RRP $75 a bottle

This is a wine serious Grenache drinkers need to know about.

The 2024 Bulman Gary's Vineyard Grenache comes from a single dry-grown vineyard in Blewitt Springs, one of the most exciting places in Australia for Grenache.

But the story becomes even more interesting when you discover who's making it.

Mark Bulman spent more than a decade at Turkey Flat in the Barossa Valley and was responsible for a historic achievement: winning the Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy with Grenache—the first time the variety had won Australia's most famous wine trophy.

Today, under his own Bulman label, he's putting Grenache front and centre.

And Gary's Vineyard is a seriously exciting expression of where modern Australian Grenache is heading.

97 Points – Halliday Wine Companion.
96 Points – The Wine Front.

At RRP $75, this is genuine fine wine.

97 Points – Halliday Wine Companion

97 Points – Marcus Ellis, Halliday Wine Companion

His conclusion is the important part:

An exceptional release with a thrilling future.

That's 97-point territory for a reason.

This isn't Grenache built around sweetness, alcohol and ripe raspberry fruit.

It's fine, savoury, spicy, structured and incredibly detailed.

96 Points – Campbell Mattinson, The Wine Front

Then there's 96 points from Campbell Mattinson at The Wine Front.

That's the beauty of this wine.

It isn't trying to impress through sheer weight.

It's about character.

Tasting Notes

The 2024 Gary's Vineyard Grenache is beautifully complex, showing layers of:

• Sour red cherry
• Dried cranberry
• Red plum
• Red liquorice
• Fresh bay leaf
• Wild thyme
• Sage
• Rose petals
• Cardamom
• Cinnamon
• Clove
• Pink peppercorn
• Ginger
• Iron and mineral notes
• Fine, lacy tannins

There's a wonderful tension between the fruit and savoury elements.

Cherry and cranberry meet wild herbs, roses and exotic spice, while the vineyard's mineral character and incredibly detailed tannins run underneath everything.

The wine feels simultaneously powerful and delicate.

And that's difficult to achieve.

Gary's Vineyard – Blewitt Springs

The vineyard story is exceptional.

Gary's Vineyard is part of the Springs Hill Vineyard in Blewitt Springs, established in 1974, with the Grenache planted in 2007.

The Grenache grows at approximately:

200 metres elevation

on:

Ironstone conglomerate mixed with sand and gravel over mottled orange-yellow clay.

The vineyard forms part of the North Maslin Sand formation and sits on a north-facing ridge above the Onkaparinga Gorge.

And importantly:

It's dry grown.

That combination of altitude, geology, exposure and dry farming gives Mark Bulman some extraordinary raw material to work with.

Gary Literally Had to Break the Ground with a Sledgehammer

This is one of the best vineyard stories I've heard in a while.

When Gary Whaite was planting the Grenache, the ironstone conglomerate running through the vineyard was so hard that he used a:

Sledgehammer and pick

to break through it.

And Bulman has incorporated that story into the bottle itself.

The label features a broken piece of ironstone conglomerate taken from the vineyard, with the reflective fragments in the rock merging visually with the Milky Way.

Subtly embossed into the label is Gary holding the sledgehammer.

That's not marketing fiction.

It's literally the story of the vineyard on the bottle.

182 Days in Sandstone Amphora

And here's where things get really interesting.

No traditional oak maturation.

Instead, the 2024 spent:

182 days in sandstone amphora.

Why does that matter?

Because Mark Bulman isn't trying to overlay the vineyard with oak flavours.

The amphora allows the wine to develop and settle while keeping the focus on fruit purity, tannin, herbs, spice and the mineral character of the site.

It's a fascinating approach to modern Australian Grenache.

81 Days on Skins

The winemaking is equally extraordinary.

For the 2024:

5% whole bunch
12 days on skins before fermentation
8-day fermentation
61 days on skins after fermentation
182 days sandstone amphora maturation.

Add those skin-contact periods together and you're looking at roughly:

81 days on skins.

That's serious extraction time.

But here's the clever part.

The resulting wine isn't massive or aggressive.

Halliday describes the tannins as lacy and finely assertive, while Mattinson highlights the wine's combination of substance and lightness.

That tells you a lot about the quality of the fruit and the sensitivity of the winemaking.

2024 – More Power, Less Whole Bunch

Vintage plays a major role in the style.

The 2024 season was considerably drier and warmer than 2023.

According to the producer's technical information, that resulted in wines with:

Less overt spice but greater inherent power.

Mark Bulman responded by reducing the amount of whole bunch in the ferment, allowing the fruit and tannin of the vineyard to come forward more clearly.

That's what great winemaking should be.

Not following a recipe.

Responding to the vintage.

Mark Bulman – A Grenache Specialist

Mark Bulman's relationship with Grenache runs deep.

After working across Germany, New Zealand and many of Australia's major wine regions, he spent more than a decade at Turkey Flat in the Barossa Valley.

Then came the moment that changed Australian Grenache.

In 2017, a Turkey Flat Grenache won the Jimmy Watson Memorial Trophy.

It was the first Grenache ever to win the trophy.

That wasn't simply a trophy for one wine.

It helped demonstrate that Grenache could sit alongside Australia's greatest Cabernet and Shiraz as a legitimate fine-wine variety.

Now Bulman has built his own label around his fascination with the grape.

The New Face of Australian Grenache

Australian Grenache has undergone an extraordinary transformation.

The old stereotype was:

Ripe. Sweet-fruited. High alcohol. Soft.

The new generation looks very different:

Perfumed. Medium-bodied. Savoury. Mineral. Tannic. Site-driven.

And Gary's Vineyard sits right at the cutting edge of that movement.

At around 13.5–13.6% alcohol, depending on the published listing, there's no need for excessive ripeness here.

Instead, the wine's impact comes from aromatic complexity, tannin architecture and vineyard character.

Gary's Vineyard vs Glen's Vineyard

Bulman makes two fascinating single-site Grenaches.

Gary's Vineyard – Blewitt Springs, McLaren Vale

Cherry • Cranberry • Herbs • Roses • Exotic Spice • Fine Tannin

Ironstone conglomerate, sand and gravel.

Glen's Vineyard – Eden Valley

Darker Fruit • Pepper • Florals • Stone • Mineral Structure

Two vineyards.

Two regions.

One winemaker.

One grape.

And completely different expressions of Grenache.

It's exactly the sort of project that shows how far Australian Grenache has come.

Food Pairings

This is incredibly versatile.

Try it with:

• Chargrilled lamb
• Roast duck
• Pork belly
• Lamb shoulder
• Wood-fired quail
• Mushroom dishes
• Charcuterie
• Spiced Middle Eastern lamb
• Salmon
• Roast vegetables

I'd particularly love this with lamb shoulder seasoned with cumin, coriander and Middle Eastern spices.

Those flavours would work beautifully with the wine's cherry, cardamom, cinnamon, rose, clove and herbal characters.

Serve slightly cool at around 15–17°C.

Drinking & Cellaring

This is still incredibly young.

Halliday's Marcus Ellis specifically noted that the wine opened significantly when tasted over a couple of days with plenty of air, which tells you there's considerable structure underneath the fruit.

Drink now–2038+.

If you're opening one now, I'd give it at least 1–2 hours in a decanter.

Better still?

Buy several.

Drink one now and watch the rest evolve.

Why We Love It

This is modern Australian Grenache at a seriously high level.

Look at the story:

97 Points – Halliday Wine Companion
96 Points – The Wine Front
Single Vineyard
Blewitt Springs
Dry Grown
200m Elevation
Ironstone + Sand + Gravel
5% Whole Bunch
Extended Skin Contact
182 Days in Sandstone Amphora
RRP $75

But it's the combination of power and finesse that makes the wine special.

Sour cherry and cranberry meet rose, bay leaf, cardamom, cinnamon, clove, wild herbs, iron and mineral complexity, all carried by extraordinarily fine tannins.

If you love the modern Australian Grenache coming from producers such as Yangarra, MMAD, Alkina and Thistledown, you need to discover what Mark Bulman is doing.

97 Halliday. 96 Wine Front. Single-vineyard, dry-grown Blewitt Springs Grenache matured in sandstone amphora.

The 2024 Bulman Gary's Vineyard Grenache isn't simply another great McLaren Vale Grenache—it's a glimpse at where Australian Grenache is heading.