Winemaker Notes
Luscious dark, black fruit, it’s plush with this some licorice and intense blackberry, spice and lively tannin. This wine is a blend of 2 vineyards-the oldest is about 140 years of age, the younger one is about 70 years of age.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
Impressive dark berries and plums on offer here with licorice and dark-stony notes, as well as black cherries. Deeply flavored palate and the tannins are so silky and sleek. Red fruit drives up fresh through the mid-palate and there’s vivid intensity to the finish. This is good. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2021 vintage was very good in the Barossa, cooler and closer to average than either of the warm, dry vintages that preceded it. Here, in the 2021 Mataro, the mulberry/earth/licorice fruit is littered with droplets of tart acidity that punctuate the layers of fruit in the mouth. I associate this friskiness to the youth of the wine; likely a year or two will help settle this into the wine it was destined to become.
Full of ripe fruit, and robust, earthy goodness, Mourvèdre is actually of Spanish provenance, where it still goes by the name Monastrell or Mataro. It is better associated however, with the Red Blends of the Rhône, namely Chateauneuf-du-Pape. Mourvèdre shines on its own in Bandol and is popular both as a single varietal wine in blends in the New World regions of Australia, California and Washington. Somm Secret—While Mourvèdre has been in California for many years, it didn’t gain momentum until the 1980s when a group of California winemakers inspired by the wines of the Rhône Valley finally began to renew a focus on it.
The Barossa Zone encompasses the Barossa Valley and Eden Valley. Some of the oldest vines in Australia can be found here.
Barossa Valley of course is the most important and famous wine growing region in all of Australia where 140+ year-old, dry-farmed Shiraz vines still produce inky, purple and dense juice for some of Australia's best wines.
In the cooler, wetter Eden Valley sub-region, the Hill of Grace vineyard is home to famous Shiraz vines from the 1800s but the region produces also some of Australia’s very best and age-worthy Rieslings.