2008 McWilliam's 1877 Cabernet Shiraz

Community Tasting Notes (5) Avg Score: 90.5 points

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  12/18/2017 - Wozza Likes this wine: 90 Points

  Flagship multiregion Aussie Shiraz Cab blend that's sumptuous, ripped, heady and long.
  
  McWilliams is Australian wine royalty. This pinnicle dry red blend named in honour of its inaugural year. The Shiraz is from McLaren Vale the cooler NSW climes of the Hilltops. The Cab Sauv from the famous red dirt of Coonawarra. 20mths in the finest French oak. No wonder it's adorned with gold, including DWWA 2015 world best red blend over $15.
  
  There's a richness of fruit. A taut, regalness in its structual parts. And an intricacy in its flavours, that annouce its pedigree. Sadly, the 15% ABV stands out. Spirit, plum, thyme, cedar and baking spice leap from the glass. The warm med/full bodied palate bristles, dry and long with fresh blackberry, plum, cassis and eucalypt. Before more savoury mulberry, cinnamon, star anise, scorched earth & cedar spices draw out a dry, warm, lingering finish.
  
  So much class. Sad the alcohol will never come into balance. Drink 2018-2028. A Wozza 90.5/100 3.3/5.0) from me.

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  9/13/2014 - chatters wrote:

  Wine-Ark boys on tour - Hunter Valley 2014 - Day 2 (Hunter Valley): Medium plus intensity aromas of chocolate, black cherry, plentiful spice, blackberry, blackcurrant, eucalyptus, vanilla…lots going on here. rowdy and rambunctious. In the mouth the wine is juicy with chewy medium plus intensity tannins that are ripe and quite silkily textured though plentiful. there is a plenty of berry, currant and cherry fruit here that persists long and gets' a bit boozy Christmas cake on the lengthy finish. Big and bolshy. Massive in fact. Today I like this a lot.

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  2/15/2013 - graemeg wrote:

  2013 Sydney Royal Wine Show - Exhibitor's Tasting & Trophy Wines Lunch (homebush & Darling Harbour): [Bronze medal] {screwcap} Big vanilla-chocolate nose. Sweet red and black fruits, but a bit anonymous somehow. Low in acid, with chalky/gritty oak tannins. Full-bodied for all that, but the flavours are yet more “anonymous modern red” fruits. Seems to somehow bring out just the weaknesses of the cab-shiraz blend instead of the strengths. Perhaps for the best, the slightly coarse texture is carried away by a short-medium length finish, so you don’t have to contemplate it too long. At least one Sydney retailer has been making big efforts to flog this label as a BOGOF special in the last year or so. A wine in search of a style. And, of interest: seventy-odd wines in the Aged red classes managed just one gold medal between them. Not a good look.

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  4/9/2011 - graemeg wrote:

  2011 Sydney International Wine Show - Top 100 tasting (Menzies Hotel, Sydney): {screwcap} McWilliams’ flagship wine pays tribute to the traditional cross-regional cabernet-shiraz blend. This is the classic mix of chocolate and vanilla aromas, laced with oak. It’s a big, handsome palate, rent with strong powdery tannins, covering all the palate effectively, and not showing too much oak flavour. Rather hard acid too; obviously intended for the long haul. Rather primary at the moment, full-bodied. I’ve no experience with this wine with age on it, so won’t predict a future.

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