Notes from an Australian Shiraz tasting, held April 8th, 2003

Dense purple color, this wine was by far the most closed wine of the flight. Showing tremendous potential, it didn’t show too well in this lineup as it took a lot of coaxing to get it to show itself. Finally as the afternoon wore on this wine began to exhibit an wonderfully perfumed nose of ripe dark fruits and spice. Smooth and rich on the palate with very fine tannins and terrific balance, my #4 of the flight. 91+, drink 2006-2012

Tasted at an informal Denver offline on 10/01/03.

The tasting began after seven hours of decanting time. This wine had a dense, monster nose of blackberry, with a background hint of blueberry. On the attack, this wine had… not much. Most of the flavor in this wine was on the midpalate to finish, which was very strange. Blackberry was predominant, with one taster also noting sweet black cherry. Minerals could be found underneath the spice on a moderately long finish.

Round two began after about 8-1/2 hours of decanting. The profile of this wine remained basically the same, though one taster noted some lavender on the midpalate. To me, on round two everything seemed weaker than round one. I have read notes that say this wine usually takes eight to ten years to come around. Admittedly this one is still very young, but it is the only wine in two nights that actually seemed to deteriorate while we were drinking. I have a suspicion that this wine is either very shut down or more likely the decanting time was just too much. One taster noted that he almost did not even enjoy this wine. I have two bottles of this left with no idea what I will do with it in the future. I think I will let it lie for another few years, and hope for the best.

Mike

Mike,

The last time I had the wine it was tighter than a bank vault. The 92-95's are all drinking well right now so I am not afraid to leave my six pack where it is for a good few years. You may have had a slightly off bottle. Also hours of decanting does not always make a wine open up, most times it will but not always.

Just received 2 bottles of this. Does anyone have some more recent TN's?

I have seen some TN's recently that indictate that it is in a hole at the moment and now is not a good time to be drinking them.

TORB, thanks. I'll probably let them sleep for a little while before trying one.

Popped and poured. Deep purple. Loads of blueberry, cassis, earthy flavors, and vanilla oak. Very smooth and lush with a long finish.