1995 d'Arenberg Shiraz The Dead Arm

Community Tasting Notes (30) Avg Score: 90.4 points

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  9/10/2016 - Goldstone Likes this wine: 91 Points

  One of a final few bottles of 3 cases consistently enjoyed over the past 10+ years.....and this vintage just refuses to lie down and die. After 20 bottles of fused corks I finally decided to go first with a 'sommelier's friend' device and it all came out in one piece for the first time ever. Decanted for an hour then drank over 2 hours. Totally translucent faded red velvet colour but still bright and fresh. Nose is immediately a box of red plums left in a wooden case in a garden shed at the end of the summer.....and interesting counterpoint of red/black plum fruit and slightly sweet decay. Palate is immediate bright fresh acidity but very quickly overwhelmed by a Musar-like sweet strawberry incense that demonstrates the fruit fading, but in a lovely controlled way. Mildly reverberant and a bit too heady because the 14% alcohol still pokes through even at the end of the life of Aussie reds. But it gets silkier and more lightly liqueur-like with a couple of hours out of the bottle. A really lovely bottle of wine drank over a home-cooked dried angus steak......this just refuses to die and to let me get on with the 2002 (the subsequent great vintage). Bravo!

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  7/5/2015 - Goldstone Likes this wine: 89 Points

  Opened and consumed at cellar temperature with no decant......the last of three cases drank over the past 10 years and with a crumbled cork typical of all the recent bottles. Nose is high-toned red plum, red cherry and red liquorice bootlaces candy together with undertones of black coal and coal-tar soap (childhood memory) in the background. More earthy plum comes out with time in the glass. Palate is good acidity followed by autumnal plum fruit and cigarettes & cigars in an ashtray that are not quite unpleasant but I suspect will become so within another year or so. With extended time you get this rather interesting drying chalky plum liqueur taste that coats the mouth. Fully mature top-tier McLaren Vale Shiraz in its sundown period. An excellent examle if you were in a wine class of what a fully mature wine should taste like. Good heady and fleshy resonance and reverberance on the finish. A great drop that has given me super and consistent pleasure for the past 10+ years but now is time to bid adieu and move on to the 2002.

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  12/30/2013 - Goldstone Likes this wine: 91 Points

  Opened and decanted briefly after extracting a totally powdered cork that has been a feature of all my bottles in recent years. Typical very heavy sediment. Totally opaque liver-blood colour just lightening to plum red translucency at the meniscus, probably because of minimal decanting. Nose is eucalyptus and bright blackcurrant and blackberry fruit with some lovely damp red Australian earth. Palate is an immediate rush of confit plums, wallpaper paste and white chalk that segues into a lovely balance of dried red chilli in chilli oil and then notes of chinese red vinegar. Super dry, chalky finish. Good length and long high-toned resonance inside the head on the finale. Just like the St. Hallett Shiraz 1985 I drank earlier this week, this exhibits all the best aspects of fully evolved older Australian Shiraz from a great producer, although the Dead Arm still has more corks hanging around the brim of its hat. One of the last few bottles from several cases I bought many years ago in Hong Kong when wine duty was 80%. Still worth every cent but it's now time to move on to the 2002 vintage, which is the only subsequent vintage to match it in my opinion.

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  7/24/2013 - peternelson wrote: 90 Points

  Patina: sweet blackberry and tar, dry black earth finish, earthy cumin; slight chunky aspect, medium + tannins still.

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  5/5/2013 - RayOB wrote: 93 Points

  Drank at Home
  Much better than the first bottle with a great complexity and subtleness from old Shiraz.

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