96 points - "Sourced from the 1969-planted Westgate vineyard in the Grampians, aged nine months in French barriques (15% new). An auspicious debut for this new label started by Melanie Chester (winemaker at Giant Steps) and Ben Mullen (from Mulline) and their respective partners. A brilliant crimson purple. Geez, this smells good. Aromas of dark fruits, lavender, graphite, a little olive tapenade and garrigues. Textured with velvety, persistent tannins and bright acidity. A delicious wine, that while hard to keep your hands off even now, will reward at least a decade in the cellar. Drink by 2032." - Philip Rich, (Halliday Wine Companion)

96 points - "The smell of this wine is quite sublime. So too the taste. There’s a sweet modesty to the fruit, combined with a plushness, though for all it’s cherry-plummed goodness its strewn with flavours of Mezcal, cloves, graphite and peppered olives, not to mention sweet cedar and general fragrant herbs. There’s both finesse and control to the tannin, and beautiful, even-tempered, satisfying length. This is really quite something. It’s terrific." - Campbell Mattinson (The Wine Front)

95 points - "Inky and opaque in the glass. Complex and lifted aromas of dried flowers, white pepper, Asian spice, dark cherry, graphite and mulberry. Really evocative and heady. Bright, fresh and lively on the palate, full of blue and dark fruits. There's real power and poise in the fruit weight and the tannins and acidity work very nicely shaping it all up. A wine of fragrance, power and precision." - Aaron Brasher (The Real Review)

Diletto - an Italian noun meaning ‘to delight’ or ‘to take pleasure in’.
Diletto is about shared pleasures – great friends working together with exceptional
vineyards to make memorable wines.
This is a collaboration between four friends – Ben, Ben, Chris and Mel centered
around a love of a great bottle of wine.
We started sharing good bottles together in 2008, when Ben (Mullen) and Mel met at
the University of Adelaide studying winemaking and viticulture. Our friendship
morphed to sharing good times and good meals, sharing houses, sharing
winemaking spaces and now collaborating together on making these wines. The
spark behind the project was originally thought up while sharing a winemaking
facility, when the idea of making great Syrah from unique sites was distilled in time
for the 2021 harvest.
Our love of Syrah/Shiraz stems from working across some of the great regions for
the variety in the Southern Hemisphere. During uni we both worked in the Barossa
Valley, Ben at Torbreck and Mel at Charles Melton. Following that Ben worked with
Shiraz in New Zealand’s Hawkes Bay as the winemaker at Craggy Range and Mel
as the winemaker at Seppelt in Great Western. These regions had incredibly unique
soils and terroirs - the alluvial Greywacke stones of the Gimblett Gravels in Hawkes
bay and the decomposed bedrock granitic sands of the grampians. Then enter our
two loves and life partners, Ben and Chris. Their passion for great wine is also strong
- Chris through his work in the on premise wine and beverage trade, Ben Hine
through his work as a lawyer (nuff said!).
Our inspiration behind the wines we make in Diletto is finding wonderful patches of
land that grow unique and delicious grapes. Making wine from each farm is our
pleasure and delight.
The artwork and design of Diletto is a further collaboration with Alison Chester (Mel’s
sister) and her partner, Will Smeets. Ali and Will, collectively and artistically known
as ‘Simon & Arnott’ are an important component of the Diletto project.

2021 Diletto Westgate Syrah

The connection to this vineyard and Tim Morris, the farmer, extends back to 2012,
during Mel’s time in Great Western. Tim Morris’ vineyard in Armstrong, just outside
of the township of Great Western, has some old vine shiraz planted in 1969. This
planting has roots that extend back to the original clonal material planted in Great
Western from the James Busby collection - these were the first grapevines imported
into Australia and shiraz was planted at neighbouring vineyards Best’s and Seppelt.
This clone of Syrah - commonly known as the Best’s Clone, the St Peters clone or
the Concongella clone, has elongated bunches and berries, lovely long berries.
The exceptional quality of Shiraz from this site is a sum of many parts - the
continentality of this region, with its warm days and cool nights and its soils of
decomposed granite bedrock, combined with the unique source material, vine age
and meticulous management by Tim make it one of the great sites for Shiraz.