Winemaker Notes
High Sands is their Holy Grail. It captures the essence of Yangarra's prized old vines. The High Sands block has a restrained authoritative power that is an antithesis to its purity, fragrance and beauty.
Professional Ratings
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James Suckling
So rich, complex and intense with a wealth of very ripe, powerful fruit on offer. Blood-orange and pomegranate notes, together with stony aromas, providing a very complex feel. The palate is super powerful and juicy. So very long, so rich and so well defined, showing mouthwatering tannins and a very sleek, long and juicy drive of red-fruit flavor. This has immense power and carries rich, ripe red and blue fruit. Wow. So intense. Drink or hold.
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2018 High Sands Grenache comes from a warmer year, and almost all the red wines made in South Australia have a powerful fruit presence that appeals to me. 2018 is perhaps a little less complex than other vintages within that decade, but that attribute takes a back seat to the pleasure and texture I find, almost across the board. This wine exactly typifies the conditions of the 2018 season: it is powerful and effortless in its thrust of fruit flavor, and I find it difficult to care that it doesn't have as many variations of "rose" or "asphalt" as, say, the 2017, 2016 or 2015 tasted before it. It's just straight-up delicious, and it's polished too. The fruit was put into Clayvin ceramic kiln-fired vessels to tame the concentration and amplitude of the vintage. And even with that, you gotta love that irrepressible exuberance.
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Wine & Spirits
This is Peter Fraser’s barrel selection of the best grenache from a parcel in Yangarra’s Blewitt Springs vineyards, the vines planted in 1946 on three feet of silica sands over clay. He cold-soaks the fruit without its stems, half of it as whole berries, then allows it to ferment spontaneously, bringing out a complex perfume in the concentrated old-vine fruit. Even as the alcohol is apparent—giving the tannins a mouth-puckering power—the wine feels cool and rich. The savory intensity takes grenache in a classical direction, with the kind of grandeur more typically found in the Rhône or in the hills above Madrid than in the New World.
Grenache thrives in any warm, Mediterranean climate where ample sunlight allows its clusters to achieve full phenolic ripeness. While Grenache's birthplace is Spain (there called Garnacha), today it is more recognized as the key player in the red blends of the Southern Rhône, namely Châteauneuf-du-Pape, Côtes du Rhône and its villages. Somm Secret—The Italian island of Sardinia produces bold, rustic, single varietal Grenache (there called Cannonau). California, Washington and Australia have achieved found success with Grenache, both flying solo and in blends.
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.