Winemaker Notes
Kay Brothers Block 6 Shiraz is a deep ruby color. Perfumed bouquet of potpourri, red fruits, charcuterie, and a hint of cedar. On the palate, layers of concentrated dark berry fruit, cacao, and black olive. Followed by slowly-building, fine-grained graphite tannins of immense length. Rich and concentrated, with power and finesse.
Block 6 Shiraz 2019 is the 36th release of this unique, single-vineyard wine, celebrating 127 years of establishment with this vintage. The original Shiraz vines were planted by Herbert and Fredrick Kay in 1892. It has become the winery’s signature wine.
Professional Ratings
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Australian Wine Companion
127yo vines foraging an entrenched root system across gravelly alluvials, sands, limestone and siltstone. The lowest yields on record for this regional icon, drenched, as always, in personality. Dark cherry, boysenberry, licorice straps and the usual melee but best, the gritty carapace of nourishing grape tannins, corralling and directing the flavours long. This is a wine of largesse and restraint. Old-school, but good school.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
This 2019 Block 6 Shiraz is a concentrated, plush, velvety wine with no gaps in its outlay of flavor in the mouth. It is clearly built for long haulage, and it shows all the signs of aging gracefully and slowly in the cellar. The fruit is so powerful and so crouched currently that it has barely made it up off its haunches. This wine is lovely, dark and deep, with miles to go in the cellar it keeps. Best After 2022. Rating: 95+
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Wine Enthusiast
From very low-yielding 127-year-old vines, this is, in typical Kay Brothers style, a massive, open-weave wine destined for the cellar. The plump plum and red-cherry fruit are ensconced in a lick of cherry cola oak and backed by cumin spice and a note of freshly poured pavement. Tannins are hulking, chalky and dominant, but should integrate with time. The rest is in place for a long life ahead.
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James Suckling
Blackberries, blackcurrants, dried herbs, dark chocolate and savory roasted meat on the nose. A hint of sweet violets, too. Full body with plush tannins. Structured, with a very saline core of dark fruit. Flavorful, concentrated and long, but here is the heads-up – this is on the verge of being overly salty.
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.”
Known for opulent red wines with intense power and concentration, McLaren Vale is home to perhaps the most “classic” style of Australian Shiraz. Vinified on its own or in Rhône Blends, these hot-climate wines are deeply colored and high in extract with signature hints of dark chocolate and licorice. Cabernet Sauvignon is also produced in a similar style.
Whites, often made from Chardonnay or Sauvignon Blanc tend to be opulent and full of tropical, stone and citrus fruit.