Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2009 Shiraz The Armagh is sealed under cork and leads with a meat/pastrami, pink peppercorn character. It’s almost old school—there’s so much tannin and so much fruit, but it’s so good. Awesome. It is dense and palate staining, really excellent, with notes of chocolate, clove bud and cocoa nib—all the good things. It has 14.8% alcohol and was matured for 18 months in 50% French and 50% American oak barriques (225 liters).
-
Wine Spectator
Sleek and expansive, with lively acidity to balance the generous blackberry, raspberry and white chocolate flavors, picking up hints of earth and hot slate on the lengthy finish. Offers presence and style. Drink now through 2020. 30 cases imported.
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.