Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2005 The McRae Wood Shiraz spent 15 months in American oak. It is opaque purple-colored with an enticing bouquet of cedar, spice box, bacon, and blueberry. Layered, with excellent depth, it has plenty of spicy, savory fruit, excellent balance, and a lengthy finish. Give it several years of additional cellaring and drink it from 2011 to 2020.
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Wine Spectator
Supple, generous and appealing for a strong peppermint quality to the red cherry and raspberry fruit. Aims for sleek texture, but the tannins get a bit raw on the finish. Needs time to settle in. Best from 2010 through 2017. 200 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.