100 Year Old Vines Shiraz 2019 (+Gift Box)

This spectacular shiraz is packed with dark fruit richness, spicy oak, tapenade, cocoa and potpourri aromas, followed by an opulent palate displaying exceptional concentration and depth. Multi-layered and expansive with dazzling richness as well as refined elegance, making it flatteringly classy. At its best: 2025 to 2045

Deep crimson. Classic dark chocolate, blackberry dark plum aromas with marzipan, roasted hazelnut, wax polish notes. Dense and voluminous with ample blackberry dark cherry, dark plum fruits, fine velvety/ al dente tannins and attractive vanilla, marzipan, wax polish nuances. Finishes chocolaty with inky, chinotto, paneforte notes. A wonderful Barossa Shiraz with lovely density, richness and fruit/oak integration. Cork seal. Drink 2025 – 2040

What a privilege, to sample a wine from vines more than a century in age. And what a cracking wine! The grapes hail from a single vineyard in Nuriootpa, the north of the Barossa, with ungrafted vines. These ancient vines grow in alluvial sandy soils. Maturation was in French oak for two years, although the oak is never intrusive. Near opaque magenta, the nose is concentrated and powerful. It is immediately obvious that this is no shrinking violet. A wine for carnivores. The aromas weave through black fruits, bay leaves, coffee beans, chocolate, animal hides, aniseed, mulberries and cassis. It is the cassis notes which stand up on the palate. Exhibiting impressive structure, approachable and generous, this is very long – persistent with intensity. Nicely balanced, there is bright acidity. There is a touch of vanillin oak notes evident but, as mentioned, these are not intrusive in any way. A really attractive Barossa Shiraz. Drink for ten to twenty years.

The 2019 vintage was a warm and low-yielding one in the Barossa, and this 2019 100 Year Old Vines Shiraz shows in the intensity, density and darkness of fruit and tannin in the mouth. Where the 2018 100 Year Old Vines Shiraz is plush, soft and spicy, this 2019 is moody, stormy and dark, with layers of star anise, licorice, charred lamb fat and a mélange of redcurrants, raspberry, beetroot and sumac. This is very good. It's almost energetic in its depth.

The scent of expensive, top quality French oak is quite intoxicating. It opens this lovely old vine Shiraz with some ‘spared no expense’ panache, as if to highlight the need for quality oak for the wine’s astonishing concentration of fruit. Fine, expressive aromas in black cherry, plum, earth, tobacco, dried fruits, warm spices and vanillin oak. The wine moves with confidence, elegance, building in power and presence in the glass. At its core is a firm structural base, the kind to build a rich infrastructure of sweet, ripe fruit complexity around. It works a treat. Its future will be measured in decades.