Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2016 Georgia's Paddock Shiraz shows a brighter, fruitier side to this wine, featuring raspberries and blueberries on the nose and palate. It still has those dark underpinnings of black olive and espresso, but it dresses them up this year with brighter, fresher fruit, adding a different layer of interest. It's full-bodied and richly textured, with a long, layered finish that suggests well over a decade of aging potential. It's yet another superlative offering from the Laughton family.
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Wine Spectator
Effusive, brimming with details of fresh mint, black walnut and black licorice that melt into rich, jammy flavors of blackberry and plum on a thick, velvety frame. Rye toast and cigar box notes linger on the finish. Drink now through 2035.
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Wine & Spirits
From a dry year and an early harvest, this is a rich, powerfully tannic vintage of Georgia’s Paddock. It’s heady, smoky and huge, with an undertone of vegetal rootiness, a bold expression of the site that needs years to come into its own.
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.”
Historically some of Australia’s most lucrative gold country, today Heathcote maintains its esteemed reputation as a source of country’s best red wines. The rolling countryside of ancient reddish brown soils bordered by mountain ranges that funnel cool air into the region during the growing season create some of Australia’s most deeply-hued and impressively layered Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon wines.