From best of best shiraz from best of best sources in best of best Barossa and Eden Valleys. It sees around two thirds of the oak barrels used as new. Indeed, if you take the exceptional Annexus grenache model, it is the opposite, in some respects. It says loudly that John Duval’s experience has led hi, to the conclusion that to make upper tier wine from shiraz from the Barossa, you need new oak/new oak elevates the wine. Intrigue.
It’s firm and sinewy in tannin and oak, but there’s great inward concentration and the feel of a wine pent up, powerful, slumbering. It’s not as commanding as the 2013 but it sure does say ‘assertive’ and ‘cellar me’, clearly. Dark berry fruit scents, sweet earth, old spice cupboard, cedar, new leather and mushroomy in perfume. The wine drills through the palate with its deep, powerful fruit and armour of oak, finding supreme length and a smearing stain of oaky-rich fruit flavour lingering. Powerhouse stuff, all up, done evenly and well. Very well. I hope to meet this wine again. Drink 2017-2030.
94+ Points - Mike Bennie, The Wine Front.