The toasty oak and meaty fermentation characters are integrating nicely into ripe, rich fruits, with plums and summer berries, hard, brown baking spices, earthy nuances and charcuterie. The palate has impressive intensity and richness, really smooth tannins and underlying power: it delivers fleshy Satsuma plum flavour amid fine, dense tannins. It's maturing nicely in bottle
Jeremy Oliver says:
An exercise in balance and structure, this longer-tern shiraz has a heady, musky and smoky bouquet whose deep dark core of small, penetrative berry fruit is knit with fresh new oak backed by slightly reductive, funky notes and dusty, chocolatey and spicy undertones. Velvet-smooth, it's polished and refined, with layers of sumptuous dark fruit delivered with supreme elegance. Underpinned with fine-grained, mouth-watering tannins, it's remarkably long and intense, finishing with lingering notes of cloves, and cinnamon
Eileen is back on form after her wayward years, and this is her best performance since at least the late 90s. There's more restraint here (14% alcohol) but no shortage of black fruits, ink, graphite and liquorice. Seamlessly honed tannins provide the kind of structure that will age for a decade or two, and perhaps three.
Deep, dense, purple-crimson, exceptional for a five-year-old wine; has everything expected of a great Australian red destined for a long life — other than a screwcap — with an opulent array of black fruits, ripe tannins and quality oak. Stains on the side