Community Tasting Notes 39

• buckeye76 Likes this wine: 93 points

  August 19, 2023 - Still deep color in the bowl. Blackberries, black raspberries, and hints of smoke and spice in the nose. Concentrated black fruits in the flavor, blackberries, plums and licorice. An elegant wine, well balanced and a medium to long finish. 93-94

  1 person found this helpful Comment

• Barry Notes Likes this wine: 94 points

  May 19, 2023 - Clear, dark ruby/purple color, med-long legs. Host left just a few drops in glass to coat the glass, nose was of old wine. After filling, nose went to full aroma beautiful Syrah fruit and no long any hint of funk. Bottle likely was opened for a few hours. This is as good as Syrah gets. Perfection on balance and integration. Clean, complex red fruit profile, refined with a mix of both sweet and tartness depending on mouth time. Still some tannins on the back end and unbelievably long finish. Delicious is an understatement. My scale ends at 95, this clearly rates 94. Best I've ever had for this grape and CH my favorite overall Aussie producer. Great now but has years left yet. Nothing off. Tim's bottle.

  Comment

• Psdycp Likes this wine: 97 points

  April 25, 2022 - A voluptuous bouquet. Ultra ripe blackcurrant and baked tomatoes in the core wrapped with layers of new leather, toasted clove, cinnamon, nutmeg and black pepper. Palate is so rich, savoury, silky and deep. The length of this Shiraz from entry to finish is amazing. Probably one of the longest I have encountered. What is even more impressive is that there is no gap at all as it transits from entry to the finish. The purity and concentrated ripe fruits, and sweet spices will hit you persistently on the palate. And this done with good level of fresh acidity and fine tannins to prevent it from becoming flabby and tired. Minimal decanting needed as its aromatic chest is wide opened for tasters. Some may find it overwhelming and too fruity sweet, while some will love this bold expression of new world Shiraz. Whichever the style you like, it is clear that a well-made new world Shiraz can develop and age beautifully for two decades and still showing some potential to grow and deepen its expression further. It is probably beginning to peak now but no hurry to drink up if you still have a few bottles in the cellar given the balance of fruit intensity, tannin structure and level of acidity. In a good cellar, it would continue to be drinking well for another decade. Clarendon Hills should have upgraded this single vineyard to Grand Cru with this level of performance.

  1 person found this helpful Comment

• senorfelipe71 Likes this wine: 91 points

  April 3, 2020 - The dominant blueberry palate and absence of tannins was quite overpowering at first however after a couple of hours the wine started to get a little more drinkable. Plenty of life in the old girl at 18 however if you like your South Australian reds with a little more balance this may not be the one for you.

  Comment

• J @ y H @ c k Likes this wine: 94 points

  April 26, 2019 - OMG - This wine may be in a perfect place. Pop, decanted and poured. It was very good from the get go but with about 45 minutes of air it exploded with almost perfect fruit flavor. Red berries, blueberries and plums on the nose and throughout the palate. Tannin is gone. Smooth with no rough edges and fully integrated taste throughout. Velvety mouth feel and an extremely long finish that caresses your tongue. After I finished my last glass, I went down to the cellar and got a bottle of a base level cali cab, brought it upstairs, opened and decanted it and picked up my empty glass. The aroma of the Clarendon Hills was still so strong in the glass that I had to blow into the glass to clear it out before I poured in the new wine.
  
  The only thing that keeps this wine from getting into the 95 pts and above territory is that it was all fruit driven so there was no syrah pepper spice or other non-fruit components.
  
  PS - I am coming to really love well-made older Aussie Shiraz. I opened this to see how it was doing at 17 years because my previous standard was at 20 years. This one was not too young to drink.

  1 person found this helpful Comment

Pro Reviews 1

Wine Definition

• Vintage 2002
• Type Red
• Producer Clarendon Hills
• Varietal Syrah
• Designation n/a
• Vineyard Moritz
• Country Australia
• Region South Australia
• SubRegion Fleurieu
• Appellation Clarendon

Community Holdings

• Pending Delivery 0 (0%)
• In Cellars 247 (43%)
• Consumed 333 (57%)

Food Pairing

Who Likes This Wine

More About This Wine