IWC 88; Winetex 88; $25

We opened this one for Thanksgiving Dinner. Our food was rather strongly flavored and I thought this might be able to stand up to it.

It was very typical shiraz color, a rather dark red. Upon opening the bottle the nose was very oaky and somewhat alcoholic smelling. After a bit of air it opened up and revealed plum and mocha notes. Before it opened up the first taste was all wood and alcohol. Not promising. I was a little upset but was planning to give it an hour decant anyway.

After an hour it was a different wine. It is very extracted with dark fruit such as blackberry and cassis liqueur in the middle. It softened up quite a bit and then took on some really nice chocolate flavors. It had a finish of decent length with a bit of oak and tannins.

Tanzer says this is elegant for a Barossa shiraz but I would not characterize it as elegant. It is not quite as complex as the 1998 of this same wine but it still a nice wine, especially if you can get it around $20.

It is drinking well now but I think at least six more months in bottle would help it out. It was still good the next day which is a good sign. I bought two more bottles.

I've become a fairly recent fan of St. Hallett shirazes. We had a bottle of their Old Block a couple of months ago, and I highly recommend it if you can find it. It's about $5-10 dollars a bottle more than the Blackwell, but a significant step up. Here's my TN for it:

1998 St. Hallett Old Block Shiraz -- Shiraz the way it's done only in Australia. Almost black and thick. Massive nose of coffee, vanilla, dark fruits. Lots of plum and berry flavors, clear note of spearmint, mocha, very long finish, big round tannins. Excellent example of this type of wine, great if you like them. I do. App. 92-93 pts.

Thanks Seaquam - I was wondering about the Old Block. It runs about $40 USD here so I wasn't going to buy any w/o a good reco.