Winemaker Notes
Already sold out in Australia, GET this wine while you can. Brilliant, smart black with red flints in color. A bouquet of caramel, mocha, fresh coffee beans, liquorice and a ripe mint, backed by intense dry prunes and a lifted spice. The palate is thick, concentrated and viscouse. The fruit weight is very powerful and the juicy texture coats your mouth, leaving you with an extremely long finish that is balanced and well rounded. This is a very exciting wine.
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Raw, powerful and muscular, with vivid, sharply etched blackberry, black cherry and peppery spice aromas and flavors, persisting impressively on the finish, veering toward tart. Needs time to settle into itself.
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Wine Enthusiast
The nose is fairly closed now, showing just herb and ink aromas, but gives the impression that it's a blackberry volcano about to erupt. With such menace and potential on the nose, the fact that the palate flavors don't knock me on the floor is almost a disappointment. This is still an excellent, flavorful wine, with reined-in plum, blackberry, raspberry and red pencil eraser notes.
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Wine & Spirits
Good McLaren Vale shiraz often develops this wine's floral scents, hinting at the smoke off chipped stone. This one is still a bit raw and young at the front, but it builds to a luscious and delicious close. Cellar it to let the blackness of tannin evolve, or decant a bottle now for spicy lamb kebabs.
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.