Winemaker Notes
Blend: 98.5% Shiraz and 1.5% Viognier
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
A very showy vintage of RunRig that opens with plenty of sweet fruit and sweetly spiced oak. Everything is turned up, redolent with violets and peppery notes, tar and toffee, as well as chocolate, toasted almonds, vanilla, nougat and panforte and plum liqueur. It brightens and focuses with air. Really impressive. The texture is super layered and beautifully integrated. Totally seamless, it builds a long, smooth, sleeve-like core of dark cherries, blackberries and plums. Really pure and deceptively powerful. Impressive now, but best from 2020.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2013 RunRig is entirely fresh and marks a significant point in the aging evolution of this cuvée. Now 12 years from harvest, the wine shows youth and vitality, alongside a cavalcade of tertiary characters. This is the point at which one can stand and look both into the future (of what this wine will look like as an older wine) and see its past, too (i.e., what the wine looked like in its youth). These precipice vintages are important to mark, and in the context of the RunRig, that precipice may occur at 12 years from harvest. Aromatically, for the first time one notes raspberry, cherry, licorice, blood plum, star anise and cracked fennel seeds. There is also leather, autumn leaves and a hint mahogany, all of which merge seamlessly. 15.5% alcohol.
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Wine Spectator
Tremendous, opening up with chocolate and cream details, offering wild raspberry and cherry flavors that expand to detailed notes of nutmeg, licorice and dried rose petal. Lingers on a smooth, velvety body. Shiraz and Viognier. Drink now through 2030.
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.”
Historically and presently the most important wine-producing region of Australia, the Barossa Valley is set in the Barossa zone of South Australia, where more than half of the country’s wine is made. Because the climate is very hot and dry, vineyard managers work diligently to ensure grapes reach the perfect levels of phenolic ripeness.
The intense heat is ideal for plush, bold reds, particularly Shiraz on its own or Rhône Blends. Often Shiraz and Cabernet partner up for plump and powerful reds.
While much less prevalent, light-skinned varieties such as Riesling, Viognier or Semillon produce vibrant Barossa Valley whites.
Most of Australia’s largest wine producers are based here and Shiraz plantings date back as far as the 1850s or before. Many of them are dry farmed and bush trained, still offering less than one ton per acre of inky, intense, purple juice.