After Five Wine Co

Purple Hands Wines is the solo venture of Grant Burge Chief Winemaker Craig Stansborough. Craig’s partner in crime is his “good mate” and fellow wine lover Mark Slade.

Craig and Mark made their first vintage in 2006 from just over a tonne of hand-picked Shiraz from Craig’s own vineyard that they crushed and fermented in his shed. From there, they have gone on to produce a range of incredible wines that include their standout, single vineyard trio the After Five Wine Co range. These wines are sourced from three individual sites across the Barossa Valley, one of which is Craig’s own Stansborough vineyard. This particular vineyard is planted with 8 hectares of Shiraz and 1 hectare each of Italian varieties Aglianico and Montepulciano, as well as a third generation, family owned Grenache vineyard. Through their single vineyard range, Craig and Mark’s aim is to produce fruit driven wines with elegance and texture that reflect the vineyards from which they are sourced.

Their After Five Wine Co Shiraz is sourced from Craig’s own Stansborough vineyard. The Old Vine Grenache is produced from vines sourced from the Zerk Grenache Vineyard, a family owned and run single site, planted by the Zerk family in 1961.

The third vineyard that Purple Hands source fruit from is the Woodlands Vineyard, which Craig and Mark uncovered in 2012, discovering 468 exceptional Cabernet Sauvignon vines hidden at the back of an old vineyard across the road from the Zerk Family Vineyard. After some investigation by a historian, they discovered that the vineyard was planted some time during the mid-1800s with the Cabernet Sauvignon estimated to have been planted sometime between 1880 and 1890 and are thought to be some of the oldest Cabernet vines in Australia.

It is these ancient vines that make up their Planta Circa Ancestor Vine Cabernet Sauvignon. They produced the first vintage of this in 2013 and it received 97 points from James Halliday, with the following vintage receiving an incredible 98 points. Due to the vine’s age of around 125 years, the yields are small, with usually only 2–3 barrels produced, which equates to only 100 dozen.