The Rutherglen Muscat is typically tawny red in colour with aromas of rose petals, raisins and dried fruit. These characters carry through to the palate, balanced with fresh acidity. The wine is unctuous and rich yet zesty and balanced.

The vineyards are located on the fringes of the Rutherglen Township, slightly to the North West, where Chambers produce drier style Muscats which express rose petal characters. The vines are hand pruned to a rod and spur system which allows each vine to be viewed on an individual basis. The trellising system is a single wire with a sprawling canopy. Harvest of the grapes for this wine commences once the fruit reaches a ripeness of 16 baumé. At this stage the grapes will have some variation throughout the bunches, with some being plump, while others showing signs of grape shrivel. Once a parcel of grape is harvested, it is destemmed and the must placed into a closed stainless steel fermentation tank. The amount of fermentation is dependent upon the final baumé level of the parcel, and it occurs around 24 hours after harvest and a soak on skins. Once fermentation has commenced and the sugar level has fallen to between 14 and 15 baumé the grapes are pressed with the fermenting juice and fortified with neutral grape wine spirit (95.8 to 96.2%). The resultant wine is then settled in stainless steel tanks and then racked into old oak casks, which range in size between 220 to 5500 litres. The wines are kept as single vintage and vineyard parcels until blending.

Chambers Rosewood makes distinctive yet classical wines from their 50 hectares of vineyards. The Rutherglen Muscats are made from the darker-skinned Muscat à Petits Grains Rouge variety (a mutation of Muscat à Petits Grains Blanc) and winemaking has been subtly changed in recent years to make fresher, cleaner wines. Each vineyard plot is fermented separately in closed, stainless steel tanks to preserve the grapes’ perfumes. Fermentation is stopped when the must reaches between 14.5 and 15.5 Baumé (potential alcohol), by adding neutral grape spirit as is traditional in fortified wine production. Upon settling, the wine is racked and placed into old oak casks (from 10 to 100-years-old, and 225 litres up to 5,000 litres in size) until required for blending. The average age of the Rutherglen Muscat blend is four years, and this has increased in recent years as new vineyards have come into production. In exceptional vintages, grapes from Chambers Rosewood’s low-yielding centenarian vines are used for the ‘Old Vine Muscat’, made using a separate, special solera.