Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
-
Wilfred Wong of Wine.com
The 2012 Jim Barry The McRae Wood Shiraz is a fresh, bright and sassy red—one of the most pleasant young, ultra-premium Shirazes I have enjoyed recently. The wine shows an almost Zinfandel-like briar note. There is plenty of berry flavor, from start to finish. Juicy and lively on the palate, the tannins play nicely as it wraps around all of the wine's elements. This is a very together wine. Drinks very well now. (Tasted: July 15, 2016, San Francisco, CA)
-
Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Medium to deep garnet-purple in color, the 2012 Shiraz The McRae Wood reveals abundant baked blackberries, cassis and mulberries on the nose dotted with cloves, menthol and yeast extract hints. Full-bodied and rich with a taut backbone of firm chewy tannins, this muscular wine finishes long and savory.
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.