The Château Single Vineyard Merlot 2024

A smooth and almost succulent merlot from the Barossa. Lots of dark fruit cake and plummy blackberry nuances emerge with a highly perfumed nose. The palate is rich and dark with plush black fruits, dark chocolate and a little liqueur cherry. A soft and most generous style with the fine tannins defining to sustain the finish. Cellar: 10 years

Attractively styled, the wine shows sweet plum, wild strawberry, thyme, floral, and nutmeg aromas on the nose, leading to a juicy palate that's beautifully rounded and supple. It's flavoursome and lingering with a succulent finish. At its best: now to 2036.

Barossa Merlot may not present itself as we would expect from a Right Bank Bordeaux, but that does not mean it can’t be an absolutely delicious red. Also worth noting is that for this sort of money, your chances of finding anything from Bordeaux’s Right Bank that will come close to this wine in terms of quality are slim to zero. Specifically from the Tscharke Vineyard, the wine spent ten months maturing in a combination of new and older French oak barrels.
The colour is a vibrant magenta. We have notes of undergrowth, raspberries, mushrooms, plums, dried herbs, beefstock, chocolate and cherries and a veritable spice kitchen on the nose. The wine really lifts on the palate, which is sleek and focused. The choc cherry notes emerge even more here. A wine with fine tannins and a lingering finish, it will drink well over the next five to seven years, during which period it would not be unreasonable to expect the score to rise.

A single-vineyard merlot from the Tscharke vineyard in the Eden Valley. That plummy, merlot plumpness is certainly there in spades along with hints of crushed herbs, beef comsommé, dark chocolate, black cherry conserve, wood spice and earth. These characters transpose over onto the palate, which perhaps shows just a little more herbal nuance, with tight, silty tannins and some nice sustain on the finish. Drink by 2038

Bronze Medal