Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
Deep garnet-purple in color, the 2013 Shiraz Covenant offers an intense, crème de cassis, baked blueberries and black forest cake nose enhanced by tar and chargrill and black loam nuances. This big, full-bodied wine is densely packed and structured like a brick house with firm and chewy tannins, good acid freshness and a long, earthy finish. It needs time.
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Wine Spectator
Not for the faint of heart. Dense and intense, with chewy tannins and plenty of Earl Grey tea notes to complement the wild blackberry core. The tannins become chewy on the finish but don't get in the way of the wine's focus. Drink now through 2030.
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Wine Enthusiast
Made in a savory, ageworthy style, the 2013 Covenant features aromas of tar, espresso and black olive. It adds intriguing red-berry notes on the full-bodied palate, along with dusty tannins that persist through the long finish. Drink 2018–2025.
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.