Payten & Jones Major Kong Yarra Valley Syrah

"Being allegedly the only two (literate) students to Graduate Healesville High School in ’97, we were always destined to work together. Behn (the Payten) drove his first Tractor at the age of 5. Troy (the Jones) was talking by the age of 1 and hasn’t shut up since.

Naturally we fell in with the wrong crowd out here, and became Vignerons/Winemakers. Behn’s dad Pete knows a thing or two about vineyards. In his years of working in the industry, he managed Australia’s first certified organic vineyard and always focused heavily on sustainability, so we knew we were in good hands. The three of us continue to spend regular nights on the red, solving the world’s problems.

Since going into wine together, we’ve fallen into a lifestyle of lazy Sundays, drinking wine, shooting rabbits, family and mates*.We’re doing our utmost to pass this lifestyle on to our children**.
*In the interests of clarity, we would like to note that drinking wine is not limited to lazy sundays, and they only shoot rabbits, not family and mates.
** In the interests of not looking like terrible parents, we would also like to note that the lifestyle we want to pass on is being able to make a life out of wine, and living and working in our beloved Yarra Valley. The rest is a bonus.

Payten & Jones wines are a little different – they are a little murky in the glass and can sometimes throw a bit of sediment.
Our wines always look better with a bit of air, served in a glass (although a jug can also work), at the right temperature, with amazing food and great company.

The wines are not ‘perfect’ by industry standards, but they have the perfect personality for the situations they’re made for.
We reckon drinking these wines is like experiencing a band live, as opposed to listening to a studio recorded track.There’s minimal intervention, a bit of ‘raw’ processes, and nothing filtered or cleaned up in any way.
The wines aren’t ‘squeaky clean’, they are a bit ‘edgy’, even a bit ‘raw’. Always interesting, with a little soul left in.
Delicious, always smashable. And bloody good with any food.

(We are also indebted to the people who feel the same when they drink one of our wines, be them Bush Poet or or even Queenslander.)"

Syrah,

Two vineyards for this wine. 100% whole bunches from one and 100% whole berries form the other. So a 50/50 blend of bunches and berries to create a unique style of Syrah that is rich and concentrated while being pretty and perfumed. Syrah made like Pinot Noir.

So there’s these Monkeys. In Panama.

They swing and stagger through the rainforest looking for fermenting berries. Not just any berry, they have to be not too sour, not too ripe, but just right. We’re convinced they have their own berry version of Goldilocks, and an eyebrow wielding equivalent of James Halliday. These connoisseur monkeys eat the equivalent of two bottles of wine a day when the ‘vintage’ is on (apparently 2018 was a great year).

Armed with this information and in a moment of clarity, Dr Robert Dudley decided to write an interesting thesis titled the ‘Drunken Monkey Hypothesis’. The wild array of flavours and aromas that can be produced in wine and why we enjoy or dislike them are directly related to our evolutionary past.

Bitterness was a sign of poison, sulphides (rotten egg) a sign of decay, and sourness was a sign of under ripeness. Not too sour yet not too ripe was a green light. Extending this line of thought, even Panamanian Howler Monkeys have an inherent ability to taste and appreciate good wine (or anything for that matter).

Humans have been indulging for millennia. Payten & Jones have taken 8 years to learn and understand how to make wine that acknowledges these evolutionary principles, but to also keep it as raw, real and interesting as those Panamanian monkey’s wine.