2004 John Duval Wines Shiraz Entity

Community Tasting Notes (97) Avg Score: 91.3 points

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  10/11/2021 - forceberry wrote: 93 Points

  The first vintage ever of this wine. The purchased fruit is sourced from multiple old vineyards in Barossa valley. Fermented in old open-top oak fermentors and stainless steel tanks with a submerged cap. Aged in new (47%) and once, twice or three times used (53%) French oak barriques. 14,5% alcohol, 5,7 g/l acidity and pH 3,55.
  
  Moderately deep, luminous and quite translucent black cherry color with an evolved maroon hue. Clean, fragrant and still relatively youthful nose with aromas of fresh forest fruits, some sweet blackberry marmalade and ripe blackcurrant tones, light meaty notes, a little bit of tomato puree, a perfumed hint of violets and a woody touch of toasty oak spice. The wine is clean, silky and harmonious on the palate with a medium-to-moderately full body and quite sunny yet still surprisingly fresh and quite youthful flavors ripe blackberries and crunchy cranberries, some toasty oak spice, a little bit of meaty umami, light floral notes of violets, a hint of allspice and a sweeter touch of boysenberry jam. Despite its obvious ripeness, the wine shows terrific sense of structure, all thanks to its high acidity and still pleasantly firm and moderately grippy medium tannins. The finish is spicy, somewhat grippy and quite youthful with long, rather dry flavors of peppery spice and more fragrant notes of allspice, some boysenberry tones, a little bit of meaty umami, light brambly notes of black raspberries, a sweeter hint of cherry juice and a toasty touch of caramel oak.
  
  A very impressive, structured and harmonious Barossa Shiraz that shows wonderful freshness, purity and sense of structure for the style. In our tasting of mainly Barossa Shiraz from 1994 to 2006, this was probably the most youthful wine with probably the highest acidity, making it come across as much more balanced and harmonious in comparison - many of its peers came across as pretty flabby, tired or both. It's quite obvious that this wine must've been a bigger and oakier wine in its youth, but at the moment it feels the fruit has integrated the oak aromatics surprisingly well so that they don't really dominate the wine, but instead intermingle with the somewhat evolved yet not tertiary fruit flavors. Based on the freshness, relatively youthful overall character and quite impressive structure of the wine, I'd say there's still some way to go before this wine is at its plateau of maturity; it is drinking very nicely now, but I can imagine it will continue to improve nicely for at least a handful of years more. Fine stuff. Drink or keep.

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  6/21/2020 - Lordswood wrote: 91 Points

  On opening it tasted of red fruits and seemed to have disconcertingly high acidity. Tasted two hours later with barbecued Ibérico pork, it was the perfect match, with darker red fruits and a little chocolate coffee. I would recommend drinking up any remaining bottles as I don’t see it going anywhere from here...

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  4/9/2020 - jmh st louis Likes this wine: 91 Points

  Mild red fruit and medium body.

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  4/23/2019 - bradfriedlander Likes this wine: 85 Points

  Still fruity, but definitely near the end of its life. Needs almost 2 hours to open after decanting to get rid of the excess alcohol in the taste.

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  11/23/2017 - roybivens Likes this wine:

  Drink up.

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