Halliday Wine Companion (97)

The price of this wine reflects the piercing brilliance of the bouquet and, in particular, the palate. There is some residual sugar, but the acidity totally obscures it. If you buy it, keep some bottles for a minimum of 10 years, allowing the treasure trove of secondary flavours to be liberated.

Falstaff (100)

Deep dark ruby, opaque core, purple reflections, faint brightening on the rim. Notes of dried herbs, suede and sage mixed with blackberry confit, candied violet and a hint of dark pesto. Powerful, juicy, pronounced fruit component, fleshy without being opulent, silky, sustainable tannins, has enormous length, mineral, fine savoury nuances of anise, a hint of nougat, black forest berry fruit on the finish, despite its youth already seductive.

James Suckling (100)

This has a very complex nose, offering so many facets of spices and fragrance with florals and orange peel, as well as crushed stones, ripe black cherries, blackberries and dark cherries, earth, chocolate and more. The intensity and power here is very tightly held and it has a build of such precise tannins, which carry very intense and assertively ripe blackberries, dark cherries, ripe plums and blueberries. So much on offer here. This has a very bold, intense feel. Exceptional vintage. One of their finest. Try from 2028. Screw cap.

Halliday Wine Companion (99)

Australia's finest single-vineyard site? I think so. With its core of gnarled shiraz vines planted circa 1860 and its picture-perfect location alongside the Gnadenberg church, it is a much adored and discussed vineyard which has been producing stellar wines since the first single-vineyard Hill of Grace was released in 1958. Today, those original vines are bolstered with its 'young' 100+ and 35+yo kinfolk and aged in 83/17% French/American oak hogsheads (29% new) for 18 months. Grace by name, grace by nature; it's a perfectly framed, elegant snapshot of pristine fruit, site and season. Precisely ripened berry fruits are underscored with notes of Chinese five-spice, sage, jasmine, licorice, mocha, blackberry pastille, charcuterie, wild flowers and cherry clafoutis. Pitch-perfect and elegant on the palate, the tannin-acid architecture tuned and sympatico with the pristine ancestor-vine fruit and a very long, silken finish that resonates with style and place. My goodness it's lovely.

James Suckling (97)

Such a luxuriant, elegant and complex young wine, this is the younger-vine material from Hill of Grace Vineyard (27-year-old vines in 2015). Multidimensional with brown spices, such as cloves and allspice, dried sage, orange peel, red berries, camphor wood and roses. A succulent palate with elegance and focus, offering blue plums and a very fine core of tannin to support such intense, vibrant fruit. Light, espresso-washed chocolate flavors lie across the fine, long and polished tannins that shape the fresh, balanced finish. A great wine that shows the DNA of the Hill of Grace terroir in a humbler mode. Beautiful now, but this will age for more than two decades. Glass-stopper closure.

Halliday Wine Companion (98)

The vines were 26yo in '16, too young for inclusion in Hill of Grace, notwithstanding its undoubted quality, matured for 14 months in French hogsheads (30% new). There's not a single hair out of place in a perfectly framed, medium-bodied shiraz. Bred in the purple.

James Suckling (98)

So much forest-flower character to this on the nose, together with bark, mushroom, tile, and blackberries. Dried plums, too. Full-bodied, yet so tight and composed, with a compact palate. Fresh five spice. Pepper and clove at the finish. Fantastic. From biodynamically grown grapes. Drink or hold. Glass stopper.

Wine Advocate (98)

The 2018 Hill of Roses Shiraz is sourced from a block within the Hill of Grace vineyard that was planted in 1989 with the intention of being a nursery bloc. The planting there is known as the Post Office Block. While the vines are, at this stage, too young to be considered for inclusion in the Hill of Grace, the wine is considered special and warranting its own bottling. Personally, I feel the young vines lend an energy and vigor to the wine, and I like the red fruited clarity that it shows each year. It matured in a combination of new (25%) and seasoned (75%) French oak hogsheads for 18 months prior to release. The nose and the palate are totally aligned: red licorice, raspberries, crushed rocks, red velvet, sage, squid ink, aniseed/anise, quartz and brine. There's the telltale black tea and minerality of the Eden on show, too. This is a sensational wine. This is texturally svelte and seamless (the nod to red velvet above is a textural observation). I love it. If ever I was going to fall for this wine, it would be here, in this clear-spoken, gracefully enunciated 2018 vintage.

The Real Review (98)

Deepish red colour with just a trace of purple in its rim, the bouquet is pungent raspberry, squashed overripe raspberry, classic Mt Edelstone. The wine is succulently fruit-sweet: gorgeously extravagant fruit floods the palate. It's almost jammy, the fine but persistent tannins just pulling it together on the finish so the aftertaste and follow-through are clean and balanced and refreshing. Lush fruit flavour, astonishing texture, very old-viney, a very impressive Edelstone. A stand-out vintage for this wine.

Decanter (97)

Powerful but unobtrusive tannins – like an engine purring – support dark, perfectly ripe blackberry, mulberry and plum fruit, with hints of strawberry, red fruit leather and smoked charcuterie notes from the oak. Spice and dried herb nuances unfurl over three days, beautifully articulating the terroir and its 104-year-old vines through notes of black pepper, sage, tea tree, star anise, mint and cardamom. Ripe and refreshing redcurrant sustains the sweet, spiced fruit through the long, sinuous finish. Terrific purity, poise and panache. Released at £137.

Matthew Jukes (19+)

This is a genuinely outstanding Mount Edelstone, with glorious fruit and multi-layered complexity. The nose sings of the Eden Valley with a sage and black fruit cocktail of flavours, and the texture is pure velvet. This is a cracker of a wine and a classic Mount Edelstone to boot, and it is already bafflingly precocious. But don’t worry because behind the exultant volleys of pristine fruit lurks muscle and crunchy tannin that will propel this wine forward for two decades and more. As time ticks on I become more and more enamoured by Mount Edelstone and this is another release that will handsomely reward those who manage to track down stock.

James Suckling (98)

This has really transformed into a complex, bottle-matured riesling with lemon-rind, lemon-butter and toasty aromas. The palate is very smoothly arranged and the wine has taken on a glossy textural quality over the five years in bottle. The length and intensity here is so impressive. This is breathtakingly pure, yet complex and drinkable. Drink or hold. Screw cap.

Halliday Wine Companion (97)

2002 vines. Wigan is king of Eden Valley riesling and yet again one of the top releases of the year. Still a magnificent straw-green at just 5yo, it's at that magic moment where primary and secondary characters unite in equal measure. All the fresh lime and Granny Smith apple of youth, backed by rising buttery, spicy, roast almond maturity. Brilliant acid line charges an astonishing finish that lasts for 30 seconds. Yes, I timed it! For all it represents, this might just be the bargain of the year.

James Suckling (97)

So vibrant for it’s age, this has great concentration of candied-lime and grapefruit-zest character. Terrific structure and energy on the driving palate, but all of this is wrapped in rich citrus fruit to create stunningly complete harmony. Very long and compact finish that suggests this has at least a further decade of aging potential. Drink or hold. Screw cap.

James Suckling (96)

Attractive bath powder and lemon blossom as well as white peach, grapefruit and some flint. The palate has a super fleshy feel with a blaze of acidity and long, fresh lemon, grapefruit and white-peach flavors. Good acidity and concentration. Drink or hold. Screw cap.

James Suckling (96)

A very fresh, piercing nose of sliced lemon with plenty of sweet perfume, too. The palate is similarly intense and vibrant with white stone-fruit and lemon flavors, delivered in an impressively intense and balanced mode. Drink or hold. Screw cap.

Wine Advocate (98)

The single-vineyard Sorte O Soro had not been produced since 2016, and the 2019 Sorte O Soro is the next vintage after that. This plot has always shown additional elegance, freshness and salinity since he started vinifying it in 2004, because of the altitude (710 meters above sea level) and the north exposure to the Bibei Valley, where the old clone is planted on fine granite sand and quartz soils. Like As Sortes, this Sorte also fermented and matured with lees in new 500-liter French oak barrels for eight months. It has 14% alcohol with a pH of 3.12 and higher acidity (at 7.5 grams) than the rest of the 2019s. It feels very harmonious, elegant and nuanced with some creaminess, with notes of wet pollen and yellow flowers. The palate reflects the soil, with vibrant granite and very fine sand and electric quartz (saline), and it's also round and powerful from the clone that is planted in the vineyard. This vineyard is in the process of being organically and biodynamically certified. 2,240 bottles were filled in September 2020. I tasted the 2019s and 2020s from Rafa Palacios in Valdeorras. For him, these are two very good years. 2019 had a mild and dry winter and a rainy and cold spring that delayed budding, followed by a mild summer with fewer hours of sunshine, which meant a delay in the ripening process. Harvest was more than one month later than usual, and the grapes achieved very slow ripening and full development of aromas and flavors while keeping the acidity. The harvest started in October and finished in November. It's a beautiful, homogeneous vintage with very good wines. 2020 saw a moderately cool and rainy winter and a dry and cold spring that resulted in 20% less bunches than in 2019. The summer was also quite dry but, fortunately, not too hot. Given the low yields, maturation was accelerated, and the harvest began at the beginning of September for Louro and from September 25th for As Sortes. Given the scarce water, the plants had to work harder deep down into the soil, which marked the wines; the silica and quartz from the sandy soils of O Bolo shaped a saline identity and the wines achieved a lot of elegance and balance. It's a more heterogeneous vintage, and the higher-altitude vineyards behaved better. The 2020 O Soro is out of this world. He gave me a quick preview of the very cold 2021, a vin de garde vintage but a challenging year with a lot of rain. They are in the process of certifying their vineyards (organic and biodynamic), but they have some problems in the vineyards with neighbors who are not organic, so it will probably be faster for O Soro and Sorte Antiga.

Decanter (98)

Sampled from a vat, this is one of the best As Sortes I have ever tasted, comparable to the iconic 2011. It's a prodigy of subtleness and elegance. Everything is firmly delicate in this wine. Restrained aromas open up parsimoniously, with a steely structure like a great Burgundy, but with flinty acidity almost like Grosses Gewächs from Rheingau. Despite the fact that the sample was not yet bottled, the wine had no oak influence, just the indication that it had been aged, as top Godello must. Rafael Palacios is refining his work year after year, reaching the magic of the greatest wines. A top wine, and one to keep.

Wine Advocate (98)

If you were to assess a wine based solely on its length of flavor, then this 2016 Autumnus Shiraz would do nothing but stun you. The rivulets of velvety, plush fruit rolls across the palate and undulate through the long, lingering finish. What a wine! Wow. As to the flavors, there's Christmas cake spice, black cherries, aniseed and licorice, dark chocolate, raspberries, mulberries, a few damsons, blood plums, beetroot, pastrami and pink peppercorns. A symphonic display. But, for me, more than the flavor and more than the length (both formidable elements in their own rights), the texture is the real highlight. The tannins are so smooth, so shapely and so streamlined that it barely beggars belief. This is what I will remember about this wine in the future: the tannins. Awesome.

Wine Advocate (95)

The 2015 O Diviso felt closed, more reticent, and seems more powerful, despite the fact they did a nonextractive vinification; they did nothing and let the wine ferment at its own pace. This matured in one 600-liter oak barrel, and this is the only red that has a slight note from the oak. There is also a relevant amount of Garnacha Tintorera, so the combination of a warm year, the small barrel and the varietal mix resulted in a more austere and backward wine that is going to require more time in bottle. The fruit is darker and the wine is more powerful than the 2014. It might evolve with time in bottle, because it certainly has the stuffing to do so, but today As Caborcas was singing, and I have to give it the edge. 895 bottles produced. It was bottled in May 2016.

Wine Advocate (93)

Peppery and meaty on the nose, the 2017 Charlie's Garden Shiraz is nevertheless ripe and fruity at the same time, with boysenberry and blueberry notes to sustain it across the medium to full-bodied palate. Silky and rich, it picks up hints of mint and licorice on the long finish.

Wine Advocate (98)

Just like last year, this patch of the Eden Valley has turned out a magnificent wine. The 2018 Yacca Block Menglers Hill Shiraz boasts fragrant notes of violets and blueberries spiced with hints of cinnamon, caramel and roasted meat. It's the biggest of the Block wines, labeled at 14.3% alcohol, but despite being full-bodied, comes across as impeccably balanced. It's fleshy and generous, but supple tannins, which turn silky on the lengthy finish, keep the overall impression one of savory elegance.

Halliday Wine Companion (97)

A stellar viognier. A wine that fans of the northern Rhone, such as myself, increasingly hold in great esteem. A complete understanding of the physiological tendencies of the variety is apparent: a salubrious texture. Unafraid of viscosity, weight and phenolics. Then, the aroma! Apricot, orange blossom, cumquat, honeysuckle and crystalline ginger. Long, slippery and yet not out of hand. A gentle chew and impeccable oak management reining it all in across the seams. Very fine.