Must admit to conflicted feelings about deluxe or reserve bottlings from what are essentially smaller scale vineyards. Do they mean more effort goes into producing better quality fruit or are they just a fortuitous separation of some tastier grapes and how much does the cheaper range suffer from the exclusion? I think this separates some older vineyard material, planted in 1969. At a normal retail of $50 compared to $30 for the normal Shiraz, I probably wouldn’t be that keen to try. Past experience suggests there’s likely to be more distracting new oak plastered all over the fruit as well. So when a few bottles of this theoretically better wine came up in auction for pretty much the same as the standard bottle it was a good chance to explore the subject. Yep, there’s noticeable new vanilla oak compared to the standard but it’s softly flavoured and firmly put back in its place by plush deep fruit. Grampians Shiraz flavours of dark bramble berries, lightened by spice, pepper and cherries. Typical Grampians savoury notes too. Some tarry earth and a lingering sense of the rich fruit this warmer part of the Grampians can produce, even in what was a relatively cooler and late year. Perhaps that shows in a satisfying tension of just ripe acidity and fine grape tannin fighting the oak. Convincing sum of the parts making something well worth a flutter. Winner.
13% alcohol. Screw cap. $27.63 at auction. Good win to balance some of the less successful bids, inasmuch as undrinkable.
94 points.
Cognitive Bottle Therapy 