Clare Valley – $58.00

Some wine facts:  50% new French oak and 50% older American oak hogsheads used; this wine shows very ripe fruit now. – That for me indicates that this must have been one hell of a fruit monster when first put into new oak.

Like most good wines these days, I open them and try a glass and go back and drink them over the next couple of days. This wine has been open for 3 days now and is opened up to the point that for me I can now enjoy the wine and evaluate it.

Ripe fruit on the nose, with truckloads of ripe red fruits that just flow onto the plate. 

With such rich and powerfully sweet fruit, I would have picked it to be Barossa Valley in a blind tasting. 

In all honesty, I personally didn’t find a lot of complexity going on in the wine until it approached the 5th day, the tannins are velvet-like and incredibly well-balanced throughout the wine. There is ripe fruit on the nose and in the mouth however, the ripe fruit has dried out to the point that I can drink it with a meal and enjoy the depth of the wine rather than just the full brunt of ripe fruit. 

Don’t take this out of context for God’s sake the wine is good and well-made.  However, I found it to be a little start-up and down at this stage in its life.  Clearly, there are years ahead of this wine and I mean years before I will feel the need to twist another cap.

Maybe a bit young to evaluate and really do this wine justice. As it is clearly not even out of wine puberty as yet.

Michael Lillis

the Rot has set in.

I was enjoying a soft ripe Stilton with this wine as I wrote this article and the cheese never even made a dint in the fruit of this wine, that’s how powerful and ripe this Shiraz is. 

The trick is decanting this wine for a ridiculous amount of time, or investing in a cellar and tucking it away for 10 years. 

Well-made wine will always be a good investment! 

Wine Fact:

The indicator that I use to ascertain whether a wine will age.

If the wine improves and further develops flavours and levels of texture that were not there the day before, over the next 2,3,4 days. 

I use that as an indicator of years the wine will possibly cellar before hitting its peak drinking time.

Scale: Open for 

2 days = 8 -10 years

4 days = 10 – 15 years

7 days and still clearly drinkable and bringing pleasure = 20 – 30 years

I drank Barolo wines at 30 years of bottle age and they still had youth on their side.

PS. Don’t take this scale as gospel. It’s my personal indicator to give me a rough idea of a wine’s life span.