Winemaker Notes
Professional Ratings
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Wine Spectator
Thick and dense, but there's some polish to the tannins, with black walnut, vanilla, mocha and cassis flavors at the core. Generous and velvety on the spicy, espresso-laced finish. Drink now through 2034.
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Wine Enthusiast
This premium Clare Valley Shiraz still feels fairly youthful, even with six years of age. Dense and chocolatey, like a Black Forest cake, it needs time in a decanter and then reveals lighter, more tangy red-fruit and licorice notes. There's plenty of wood-spice and cola character from the oak influence, too. The palate is held firmly in place by powerful, woody tannins but the fruit is rich enough to hold its own. Big, polished and fairly well balanced, this should continue to cellar until 2029.
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.