Category: Shiraz

2017 Yangarra Estate Shiraz

South Australia may have built a formidable reputation for rich, generous Shiraz but it’s Grenache that seems a better fit to climate for my less than populist geek view. So, a few bottles in a damaged label six pack at the wholesaler’s annual clearance, or frenzy as it’s known hereabouts, promised a good chance to see what a favourite producer are doing. Very well in short. A touch of dusty bottle development already, tar and deep brown spices. Tangy plums suit the spice well. Sucking in oxygen over two days and it freshened up to include rich summer and autumn berries touched by chocolate. Terrific shape through the mouth with settled acidity well moulded to a sweep of stem and skin tannin. Any oak influence a mere afterthought. Sweet earth to season and a purple haze lingers. Compact and very well made. So different to those booze soaked, oaky, acid adjusted monsters of yore. Very happy to have another waiting a few years. Beautiful grape growing.

14% alcohol. Screw cap. $35 RRP and still great value at that.

94 points.

2019 Gravity Wine Co Ghost Syrah

Shamelessly biased review, this, as over the last decade I’ve come to admire the quiet, intelligent and determined way the man behind the Gravity Wine Co goes about things. Especially the sanguine shrug of the shoulders when frost decimated the chances of making wine in 2020 amongst other difficulties. One joy not lost though was the chance to sit with a glass of something very tasty. My inadequate scribble suggests an extraordinary spice bazaar, perfect mint and raspberry, haze of bay leaf, rosemary and almost lavender. Bit of Heathcote forest too. The inherent deep fruit softness and sweetness of tannin and acidity never to be mistaken for lack of backbone. An unassuming suggestion that this might be the best south bit of Heathcote Syrah he’s made, not going to argue otherwise. Spookily good.

13% alcohol. Screwcap. Perhaps around $30?

95 points lacking a bit of objectivity.

2018 Giant Steps LDR Pinot Noir and Syrah

Count my blessings, a place to live where the Covid numbers aren’t troubling the scorer and a bottle to remember very early days in Australian wine when they cared not for variety but made light dry reds by blending. Sadly I’ve never been privy to one of the great Maurice O’Shea blends. Despite an unreasonable prejudice for Pinot the pure, this works a treat. Perfume and cherry Pinot at hello, spice and raspberry arrive late and keep going on a bit. It was at first crack smoky and too reduced for me and needed a day’s air. Second day, there’s still some biscuity reduction, strawberry and roses at the front whilst that Shiraz has a party at the back with berries and toffee. Fine, open meld of acidity and a lick of stem tannin. Graceful in the making. So much for preconceptions, the some of the parts here is more.

13% alcohol. Screw cap. Another bargain from the wholesale clearance.

92 plus a bit for enjoyment.

2011 Wendouree Shiraz

There was much bemoaning the 2011 vintage in quite a bit of Victoria and SA. Well, it was very soggy and cool for days in summer. Nevertheless, comes the test and if the vineyard’s ancient, deep rooted and seen worse, then there’s reason to believe it won’t be a waste of money to support this oversubscribed treasure. Comparisons, here we go again, are maybe less than odious if they help with context. If the 2011 Malbec had Wendouree packing up its flavours and taking them on a trip to Barbaresco to find its structure, then this Shiraz seems to have swapped the usual iron and velvet for a finer acid based frame from somewhere like Saint Joseph. In fact this is delight for those sniffy North Rhône fanciers, dark brown spices, menthol, Oz bush and bracken lift and season just ripe cherries and very ripe raspberries, harmonious and sotto voce. Floating and crisp rather than that usual firm velvet fog. Makes a nonsense of trying to fetish the favoured vintages, Wendouree way the bottle always seems too small.

13.7% alcohol. Screw cap. Thanks for keeping the faith dear C.

93 points but more soul than some bigger scores.

2017 Hervé Souhaut Syrah

Time seems to pass so quickly, the first vintage of this quintessential natural wine that won my heart was 1999. A discovery at that Paris haven of real wine, Caves Augé. Some years later and it seems as if the wine making just gets better and the results appear finer, more perfumed and poised. There’s that floral, smoky raspberry thing typical of the Northern Rhône and perhaps also characteristic of whole grape Syrah ferments? Amazingly perfumed, that typicity plus brown baking spices, a riot of autumn berries and rocks. Rich fruit floats on supremely ripe but crisp acidity. Tannin to support, gently. The essence of flavour ripe Syrah on featherweight frame. Just so clean and focused, brilliant craft. Low alcohol too, liver approved.

12.5% alcohol. Nomacorc Green Select. $40 at auction which was good as the RRP is rising most unfairly.

94 points.

A 2019 was just as good. The note above serves well. Saves repeating myself. Beautiful natural wine in the true sense.

2015 Wynns Coonawarra Estate V and A Lane Shiraz

Well, the WordPress platform can be odd. I tried using an ampersand between V and A as it appears on the label and when it saves it turns into & …..bizarre. So, “and” it is. Conjunctions aside, this is an elegant, for want of a better word, fresh and sort of subtle Shiraz, an antidote to the high alcohols of the late nineties and early two thousands. I can clearly remember a 1980 Leconfield Cabernet drunk in the nineties that was the essence of sweetly perfumed pillow softness and somehow this echoes the memory. Starts with noticeable oak, albeit not too raucously so, then in sweeps pepper, spice and just ripe red fruits that last and perfume the mouth. Soft but positive tannin and acidity match the composed flow of flavour. Even after a couple of days oxygen, it stayed tightly bound, suggesting a future of slow resolution in the best tradition of great claret wherever it’s made…..and no buts about it.

13.1% alcohol, AND better for it. Screw cap. $35 Dan Murphy clearance, thank you very much.

93+ points.

2010 Bindi Pyrette Heathcote Shiraz

From one of the originals of Macedon and the nicest, most thoughtful vignerons around. Syrah from Heathcote, a bit further north and quite warmer than those chilly hills, picked earlier than some for bright bouncy fruit and gastronomic, nice word, pleasure. Clean smells of Australian forests, some bay leaf, whole bunch sap, a passing whiff of smoky reduction and steaming up through the detail, a bright sweet red berry plume, so typical of Heathcote. Just as it is to sniff, so it is in flavour. Nice mesh of fine tannin and settled acidity. Time has knitted it all together without losing the raspberry, plummy richness. It’s not enough for Bindi to make some of Australia’s most understatedly intense Pinot and Chardonnay commanding thoroughly deserved prices, there’s graceful Shiraz for us cheapskates too.

13.5% alcohol. Diam. $26 at auction, quite a score.

93 points.

2015 Luke Lambert Syrah

This is so far away from what Australian Shiraz tasted like twenty years ago it’s probably earned the rather precious Syrah title. Over three days it proved to be a slippery enigma, albeit a delicious one. So many things, stalks, pepper, salami, sweet rhubarb, tart raspberry, aniseed and rocks. No sweet allure, adult dryness strung out on tight cables of tannin and perky natural acidity. By the second day, there’s a revolving door of green stem and sweeter summer pudding red fruit. On the third day, the last glass the best, absolute essence of peppered raspberries. So fine and delicious. Medium bodied, it shows the flavours of Yarra Shiraz can pitch to note perfect ripeness. Sort of a grown ups’ fizzy drink, there was still a good phhtt of dissolved CO2 as the cork came out of a two thirds empty bottle on day three. Better that than sherried Syrah perhaps?

13.5% alcohol. Screw cap. 618 gms of glass. $40 ish on release.

Started out 93 puzzle points, then 95 by the end.

2012 Wynns Coonawarra Shiraz

Heritage on a week night budget. Still fresh as the air hits, a little age seems to have rounded the fruit and softened the bones. Complete sweet spice box, lots of very ripe fat plums, dark berries, tar and a regional hit of mineral water salinity. Tannin ripe and soft. It’s just amazing how such broad acre, economy of scale production produces something so authentic and tasty for so little cost. It’s been a long time since the 1986 vintage that first won my heart.

13.5% alcohol. Screw cap. 584 gms of glass. $15 Dan’s cellar special.

91 points.

2010 Les Vins de Vienne Saint Joseph L’Arzelle

Three really good wine producers of the northern Rhône, Cuilleron, Villard and Gaillard got together for this label and produced some great value. Briefly imported into Australia by Dan Murphy’s, sadly no more. Seems to have enjoyed its slumber in bottle, opens with clean, almost new worldly so, smoky red fruits, sort of those raspberry, loganberry or blackberry flavours all mixed up. There’s also brown spices, pepper, a bit of the old charcuterie and incense. Over time a waft of violet on top. Still bright and jaunty. Just so, ripe tannin and acidity are superbly tucked in. A treat on a very cold night, cockles warmed alright.

13.5% alcohol. Fancy 50mm cork. Not sure why Dan’s stopped importing but there’s always the bargain clearance pricing. Just wish I’d bought more than one.

93 points.