Winemaker Notes
This wine is ideal for long term cellaring. It is suggested that the wine is allowed to "breathe" a minimum of two hours before being consumed to fully appreciate the distinctive flavors and aromas.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2004 Shiraz The Armagh is sealed under cork. Aromas of bar mat, peat, turned black earth, broken grass, licorice and star anise. In the mouth, notes of kirsch, cocoa and beef crust eddy through to the finish. This is an enigmatic, precipice wine—it is sitting perfectly on the edge of young and old. It's dense and almost rigid yet possessed of fruit purity—cleansing. This is big, at 15.2% alcohol, and it matured for 16 months in 30% French and 70% American oak barriques (225 liters).
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.”
The Clare Valley is actually a series of narrow north to south valleys, each with a different soil type and slightly different weather patterns along their stretch. In the southern heartland between Watervale and Auburn, there is mainly a crumbled, red clay loam soil called terra rossa and cool breezes come in from Gulf St. Vincent. A few miles north, in Polish Hill, is soft, red loam over clay; westerlies blowing in from the Spencer Gulf influece this area's climate.
The differences in soil, elevation, degree of slope and weather enable the region to produce some of Australia’s finest, aromatic, spicy and lime-pithy Rieslings, as well as excellent Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec with ripe plummy fruit, good acid and big structure.
Clare Valley is an isolated farming country with a continental climate known for its warm and sunny days, followed by cool nights—perfect for wine grapes’ development of sugar and phenolic ripeness in conjunction with notable acidity levels.