2016 The Pawn El Desperado Rose, Adelaide Hills

This Rose is made from grapes sourced from our Langhorne Creek vineyards. A delicate pale salmon hue signifies this as a wine to be consumed on a warm summers day, with food and friends. It shows lifted floral aromas mixed with freshly picked strawberries. The wine has a balanced acidity with a variety layered complexity that will astonish those drinkers expecting a simple quaffer. The palate has delicate hints of rose petal and Turkish delight, and should be consumed chilled or on ice.

The Pawn Wine Co. had its beginning in 2002 out of necessity when vignerons and winemakers Tom Keelan and his wife Rebecca Willson had a small parcel of fruit deemed ‘not good enough’ by a particular nameless, soulless wine monolith. They had now become mere Pawns in the global wine game, doomed to be played and moved around, and ultimately sacrificed.

So the 2 rolled up their sleeves and decided to show the corporate colossals what can be made from the right varieties grown in the right location. They set out to make small hand selected parcels of wine from alternative varieties grown in the Adelaide Hills and Langhorne Creek. They had seen that alternative grape varieties were being used as blending tools by the bigger corporate wine companies and that the potential of “old world” wine styles was not being allowed to shine.

Like Pawns, these varieties were ignored or sacrificed by the dominating wine corporates and not being used as stand alone artisinal Adelaide Hills and Langhorne Creek wines of provenance.

This first vintage of The Pawn received so many accolades, that it only seemed fair to start the crusade and take on the global wine giants, stand up for the little guy and  rebel against the corporate players of the wine industry.

Tom and Rebecca have set out to identify other idyllic viticultural sites and hand selected parcels of fruit within the Adelaide Hills and Langhorne Creek to produce wines that are not only a bit unconventional, but enjoyable to drink, incredibly food friendly, and made in a style that reflects their true origins – the ultimate in hand crafted Artisinal wine.