Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2005 Shiraz "Covenant" from the Clare Valley was aged for 22 months in French and American oak hogsheads, 30% new, and bottled unfined and unfiltered. It exhibits cooler climate hints of mint and menthol, as well as mineral, pencil lead, blueberry, and blackberry liqueur. Elegantly styled, with excellent depth and concentration, it will evolve for 3-4 years, and drink well through 2020.
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Wine Enthusiast
Like all of winemaker Kevin Mitchell's Shirazes, this is full-bodied and lushly textured. The point of difference here is the fruit character, which leans toward black olives and espresso, with just enough stewed fruit to provide cushioning. Finishes long and velvety, hinting at vanilla.
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Wine Spectator
Has impressive concentration without getting heavy or dense, offering sleek cherry, blackberry, berry leaf and mineral flavors that keep swirling through the long, focused finish. The tannins are well-submerged. Best from 2010 through 2017.
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Wine & Spirits
Intensely concentrated from the initial scent right through the tarry finish, this is made in a hyper-ripe style with some volatility to spice up the blueberry, black cherry and chocolate flavors. It finishes warm, with a little bitterness in the complex tannin. For wintry braised meats.
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.