Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Enthusiast
One of the more approachable of the d'Arenberg single-vineyard collection of wines, this opens with notes of brown sugar, tarry fruit and bright cassis. It's full bodied and creamy in texture, with flavors of mocha, cassis and vanilla that culminate in a long, dusty finish. Drink now–2025
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
With a deep garnet purple color, the 2010 The Little Venice Single Vineyard Shiraz offers a fruit-forward nose of ripe black cherry and blueberry notes intermingled with baking spices, star anise and chocolate box aromas. This medium to full-bodied wine is well-poised in the mouth, has a medium to firm level of rounded tannins and lively acid that gives a backbone to the expressive fruit, and has great persistence on the finish. It is approachable now and will drink to 2023+.
Rating: 92+ -
Wine Spectator
Firm in texture, showing tightly wound tea leaf-accented blackberry and dusky spice flavors coming together on the expressive finish, with crunchy tannins. Needs cellaring. Best after 2015.
Marked by an unmistakable deep purple hue and savory aromatics, Syrah makes an intense, powerful and often age-worthy red. Native to the Northern Rhône, Syrah achieves its maximum potential in the steep village of Hermitage and plays an important component in the Red Rhône Blends of the south, adding color and structure to Grenache and Mourvèdre. Syrah is the most widely planted grape of Australia and is important in California and Washington. Sommelier Secret—Such a synergy these three create together, the Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre trio often takes on the shorthand term, “GSM.”
Known for opulent red wines with intense power and concentration, McLaren Vale is home to perhaps the most “classic” style of Australian Shiraz. Vinified on its own or in Rhône Blends, these hot-climate wines are deeply colored and high in extract with signature hints of dark chocolate and licorice. Cabernet Sauvignon is also produced in a similar style.
Whites, often made from Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc tend to be opulent and full of tropical, stone and citrus fruit.