d'Arenberg The Footbolt Shiraz 1998
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Parker
Robert
Product Details
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Winemaker Notes
The Old Vine Shiraz, like all of d'Arenberg's traditional red wines, gains considerable complexity with age. The colour moves through a red-brown into a brown-tawny spectrum. The aromas slowly incorporate more and more developed cedar, coffee and developed dark chocolate smells with leather, tobacco and earthy aromas complementing the rich developed fruit characters. More often than not distinctive peppery-spicy characters come to the fore after a little time in bottle.
On the tongue, the Old Vine Shiraz maintains a wonderfully textured palate with significant bottle age. Gentle, grainy black olive flavours balance the sweeter coffee, chocolate and mint characters. Malty, earthy and distinctly savoury characters on the rich middle palate dominate against a canvas of soft tannin and piquant acidity. The hallmarks of McLaren Vale, d'Arenberg, and The Old Vine Shiraz; a soft, rich middle palate, terrific texture and a long rolling finish, can reside with this wine for a number of years, even decades, as more than four decades of previous vintages have shown.
Tell Your Friends
Tell your friends that this wine was named for a prize-winning horse sold in 1912 to afford to save this family business.
Professional Ratings
- Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
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d'Arenberg is one of the undisputed kings of Australian Shiraz and other Rhone varieties that have historically defined the region. A century on, their vineyards have grown to some 450 acres in McLaren Vale, including Shiraz dating back to d'Arenberg's first plantings in 1912, and nearly one-third of McLaren Vale's old bush-vine Grenache. Fourth generation winemaker, Chester Osborn, recently converted all of the family's vineyards to organics and biodynamics and moved to solar energy in the winery. All the while, in terms of winemaking, not much has changed--all the wines are basket-pressed, the reds foot-trodden during fermentation; everything is done in small batches, leading to an impressive array of bottlings every year, each showing a different facet of McLaren Vale terroir. Having been inducted into Wine & Spirits Magazine's Hall of Fame for earning a place on its Top 100 Wineries nine times, this accolade is a reflection of d'Arenberg's revered reputation worldwide.