Langton’s Selections Wild Duck Creek Spring Flat Shiraz, Wild Duck Creek Duck Muck Shiraz, Wild Duck Creek Alan’s Cabernets Wild Duck Creek Estate, located in the voluptuous countryside around Heathcote, was established in 1980. At the age of 18 David Anderson bought his first block of land in Heathcote after receiving his first pay packet and getting a bank loan. Wild Duck Creek Estate comprises nine acres of vineyard located on mudstones and shales interspersed with quartz –‘classic broken up gold country’. Fruit is also sourced from another seven vineyards in the area planted on varying soils including Heathcote's red loams. Vineyard management is definitely low input. The vines are vertically shoot positioned and are grown on a protected easterly aspect to take advantage of the morning sun. Vintage can take place over a 6-8 week period, every vine triaged for optimum ripeness and flavour development. The fruit comes in with naturally high acids and a staggeringly high 17+ degrees Baume. The wines are vinified in a jumble of different-sized open fermenters and regularly hand plunged. At dryness the wines are drained and pressed in a home-made hydraulic press and then transferred into 100% new French and American oak. Interestingly and almost impossibly, some of Anderson’s wines are made without any sulphur addition whatsoever. David Anderson is the quintessential Australian bush engineer whose career as a fencing contractor and vineyard developer has given him an intimate insight into the best sites in the area. He is entirely self-taught and has an infectious enthusiasm. Over 200 volunteers come during the year to help him. The remarkable Duck Muck is so densely packed with fruit and tannins, it is almost as solid as panne forte. It is a wine that Dave “Duck” Anderson would describe as an “ambulance induced wine”, a “firecracker in a glass” or a wine that would “wound you”. Duck Muck is hardly a shrinking violet. It’s more like an explosive that promises to rip off the lining of your mouth. No doubt on a freezing cold night it would warm your cockles but at $1000 a bottle during it’s hey day it would be cheaper buying a heater! Wild Duck Creek’s single vineyard Spring Flat Shiraz, on the other hand, is a more serious wine and has been slowly building up interest from collectors for some years. Across vintages the wine is strongly flavoured and pleasingly balanced with chocolaty graphite aromas, plenty of fruit richness, volume of fruit, dense ripe tannins and well balanced new oak. Father and son winemaking team Dave and Liam Anderson take a fairly laissez faire approach to winemaking. The vineyard is dry-land farmed. The severe drought conditions over recent years will no doubt have played a part in the overall concentration and character of fruit. The berries are typically small and thick skinned resulting in pitch dark wines with plenty of weight and substance. Winemaking is “nothing fancy” but the wines are now matured in fairly heavy toasted American (50%) and French (50%) oak. Interestingly the oak does not dominate at all; an illustration of the overall power and balance of flavours in the wine. Overall production is around 2400 cases. Wild Duck Creek is going great guns. Andrew Caillard MW, Langton's