Cedar, dried cherry and Asian spice flavors are backed by lithe acidity and tannins in this savory style, with a minerally richness on the finish. Drink now through 2023.

Very minerally and fresh-tasting, with light spicy accents to red currant and dried raspberry flavors that are crisp and focused. Slate and graphite accents on the finish. Drink now through 2023.

Taut, fresh and filled with juicy energy to the raspberry and macerated cherry flavors. Notes of hot stone linger on the finish, with a crisp spiciness. Drink now through 2023.

Vibrant cherry and raspberry flavors are boosted by fresh acidity and lithe tannins. Savory snap on the mineral-inflected finish. Drink now through 2023.

This fresh red features dried rose petal notes to its cherry and currant flavors, which are filled with crisp acidity. The taut and minerally finish is structured and direct. Drink now through 2023.

Broad-textured, with sun-dried tomato accents to the ripe currant and cherry tart flavors, showing beefy accents on the firm, spicy finish. Drink now.

Medium-bodied, this red offers dried red fruit and spice flavors, with beefy hints and dried portobello notes on the finish. Drink now.

Nielson’s 2018 Pinot Noir is rich, elegant and full flavored. Floral, earthy and berry-like elements dominate the aroma, while the palate offers suggestions of cherries and plums. This luscious Pinot is both elegant and dynamic.

This midnight purple colored red blend opens with a black licorice and blackberry bouquet with hints of vanilla oak. On the palate, this wine is full bodied with medium acidity. It is also mouthwatering and savory. The flavor profile is a crushed stone minerality and mild blackberry blend with notes of black plum and oak. I also detected some hints of blueberry and dark chocolate towards the end. The finish is rather dry, and its dusty tannins build-up and stick around for a very long time. This wine would pair well with dry aged ribeye.

Wines like these are hard to fault - they just ooze class. A clever Shiraz once more from Peter Fraser and Yangarra Estate.If you ever get the chance to walk the Yangarra Estate vineyards, take it. The geology is something. 50% of the fruit for this Shiraz was grown on sand and the other 50% on ironstone - all certified organic and biodynamic. It spent time in 20% new French puncheons with the balance in older barriques, puncheons for 12 months. Mulberries and blueberries captivate. There is a sleek and polished presence about the way this carries itself. Vibrant and energetic, it is delicately spiced. The mouth is filled with generous fruit yet it is not weighty. No sad faces will be seen with this in the glass.

Treat guests to the Penner-Ash Willamette Valley Chardonnay, 2018, an unexpected option from an area known for Pinot Noir. Rich and honeyed, this wine has yellow apple and ripe peach flavors with hints of nutmeg and vanilla. A luxurious lobster salad would pair beautifully.

It would be fascinating to put this Hickinbotham Trueman Cabernet Sauvignon 2019 up against 707 or the like. It sure has the guts. An absolute top shelf McLaren Vale Cabernet, and structured to last generations (and nowhere near ready). In fact, that readiness counts against it – it’s a monster.Oh and do you like the new labels? I think I like the old ones tbh. But that might be a cognitive bias thing. Speaking of cognitive bias, I struggled to rate this for philosophical reasons. Do you call this a Top Gold (18.7/20, 95/100) scoring wine, because of the impeccable structure signalling what it will become? Or do you go a little lower, because the oak is such a dominant force rather than an expression of fruit and terroir?The winemaking, as usual, is ace. Sourced from 3 blocks on the Hickinbotham property, with the bulk yielding at less than 1.5t/acre. The juice spends 17 days on skins minimum, bottled October 2020 (so let’s say 12-15 months in oak minimum). Numbers, for the interested: pH 3.6 TA 6.4g/l.Classy oak is indeed a potent feature here. Dark berries meeting coffeed oak. It’s deep, dark and very finely polished too. Too much? It’s hard to argue with the perfection of the palate otherwise – coiffed and ultra-fine, with the most perfect tannins. But I’m torn. I see oak on nose, on the palate and through the tannins, while the Shiraz is just glorious from the get-go. Just a teensy bit warm on the finish it is too.Too young by half, but the perfection of the body is excellent. The plus signs couldn’t be more important.

Penner-Ash sources a fair number of blocks of the landmark Zena Crown vineyard, mostly at pretty high elevation. Most of the fruit is destemmed, and the cold maceration is being reduced to manage the extraction and assure elegance and vibrancy. The freshness and structure is achieved here, along with a vibrant blackberry fruit with hints of violet and ginger. Tannins are firm but not austere, and the wine has an exceptional balance between the fruit, the freshness, and the density that lead it to a lovely finish.

Produced in the estate vineyards in the Yamhill-Carlton AVA, the 2019 vintage from Gran Moraine is a bit reserved initially with a bit of smoky reduction. Yet, with time a bright, pure raspberry and black cherry fruit develop with a pronounced mineral cast and interesting complexity of savoury smoky aromas. The texture is fresh yet not lacking in breadth or body, and the finish is rewardingly long.

5 Sweater-Wather Wines With Christopher WatersThis is a one hundred per cent barrel-fermented Chardonnay with the richness of California. It features flavour notes of fresh fig, nuts, floral lift, pear and vanilla. Waters recommends pairing with chargrilled corn on the cob or grilled chicken.

Enter, the latest majestic McLaren Vale red the Hickinbotham stable, the Hickinbotham Clarendon Vineyard Brooks Road Shiraz 2019.For anyone who loves Penfolds Shiraz, this is the alternate choice – a McLaren Vale red that has the grandiosity and Penfoldian lavishness, but with authenticity and a sense of place.Notionally, Peter Fraser makes this wine, while Chris Carpenter makes the Bordeaux varieties. Of course, Peter is across both given that Chris is Napa-based, but this Shiraz still feels different (and less oaky) compared to the Cabernet (for example).The recipe for success here is undeniable. Sourced from the original ‘71 plantings on the Clarendon vineyard plus some 2002 plantings. Gentle maceration, 20 days on skins. 6 months on lees in 30% new French oak puncheons. Then a further 6 months in a combination of old, large foudre and an 18hl concrete egg (numbers: TA 5.9g/L pH 3.6).Ultimately, it all leads to an incredibly polished, ultra-classy modern McLaren Vale Shiraz. Oak plays an important bit part in this wine, giving the finishing touches to the texture. But that’s not discounting the core of coffeed, richly flavoured, dark berried fruit. If I had to zone in on just one perfect component, it would have to be the texture. It had me thinking of Sassicaia, such is the unquestioned smooth-yet-forceful nature of it. Cosseting, powerful, savoury, yet incredibly rich in a fancy flourless chocolate cake fashion.Satisfying. Balanced and wonderfully regional. The score will only go up with another few years in bottle too. Top class.Hickinbotham Clarendon Vineyard Brooks Road Shiraz 2019. Best drinking: sure, open it now and revel in the depth of flavour. Or wait just a few years for even more oak cohesion. Either way, it will live for decades.

Lots of whole bunches driving a sappy fresh-herb edge to the nose, as well as fruit that moves in a strawberry and red-cherry direction. So fresh and vibrant on the palate, this has a bright stream of red-cherry flavors and attractively crisp tannin. Drink now.

In choosing whether to call their wine pinot grigio or pinot gris, wineries typically signal their wine’s style by the choice of language. For example, this plump, juicy wine sports the French version of the grape name as a subtle suggestion that it will taste more French than Italian. Secondly, the label’s fine print can be used to confirm or deny, since low-ripeness Italian-style wines will usually contain no more than 13% alcohol maximum. In this case, the wine’s 13.5% alcohol strongly suggests that the winemaking team took its inspiration from Alsace, which is easily confirmed on first sip. The wine’s vibrant flavors of hyper-ripe peaches and pears are far stronger than the delicate apple-y taste of a lighter “pinot grigio”. A faint thread of floral aromatics like violets and jasmine add French-style complexity as well. The result is a delightfully flavorful white wine well-suited to a wide range of boldly seasoned foods, from Vietnamese spring rolls to sausages and sauerkraut.

From a pioneering Napa producer founded in the 70s, this strikes a somewhat traditional note with more elevated tannin which I like in cabernet. The nose is classic and quite pretty with blackcurrant, cedar, violet some menthol and consderable oak. It is full bodied, fairly dense, warm and chunky with considerable alcohol heat and gritty tannin on the finish. The length is excellent. Best 2025 to 2035.

Essentially a Rutherford-based cabernet sauvignon with minor roles played by franc, merlot and petit verdot for an overall perfectly reasoned, seasoned and spiced bit of classic wine film. Rich in ’17, tannic through alluvial chalky drive and a slight gravel overbite. Hard not to be seduced by the rugged beauty and hard to get at fruit zone out of a vintage that can be stubborn when it so chooses to be. Lay this down another year at the very minimum. Drink 2022-2027.

Moderately dark garnet color in the glass. Seductive aromas of Bing cherry and oak spice. Light to mid-weight in richness, featuring flavors of black cherry, black raspberry and a hint of oak spice. Very fine grain tannins and upbeat acidity compliment the fruit core. Plenty of gentle goodness in a glamorous wine that exudes class.

Aromatically evolving now, if still somewhat smoky, the palate on Freemark Abbey's 2017 is yet still very firm and tightly wound, with a combination of gritty, dusty tannins, hard acids and high alcohol that combine to result in an astringent, unyielding texture. Despite the full body and 14.7% alcohol declared, the stuffing on the mid-palate is modest, exposing angularities and rough edges. Length and depth are decent, but overall harmony questionable. Another few years in the cellar should help to mitigate the asperities and disparities, but I suspect this will not be counted among the winery's more memorable vintages.

Displays a lovely purity of fragrant, fresh raspberry with mouth-watering pithy pomegranate, cranberry, al dente red cherry and cherrystone fruit, some grip/grit to the tannins and savoury undertones. Youthful as it looks, it’s lively in the mouth – energetic, with a coiled tension. And, though intense, the fruit cleaves close – with a certain sparseness and economy about it – as if to remind you, like the vines, it has staying power and will only get better! Layers of flavour unravel given time, with musk (dried roses), pepper, citrus orange peel and lavender inflections. The (natural) acid backbone, the tannins – sandy and mineral, sinewy and scratchy (thoroughly engaging) – make for a long, linear palate, with great persistence. Culminates with a sandpaper over the tongue quality to the finish. These gnarly old vines and this winemaking produces a long haul wine. Fraser reckons it starts opening up in 6-8 years (he mentioned that the 2013 & 2014 are just opening up, but still quite primary). At 8-10 years, he says it’s “very safe and covers off best of both worlds, but there’s no reason they will not go 20 plus in the right conditions from the best vintages.”

The cabernet shiraz blend – often labelled “claret” back in the day – is a classic Australian wine style, and this is a terrific example. It’s made entirely using grapes from the 50-year-old blocks of cabernet and shiraz planted at Clarendon, with Chris Carpenter looking after the cabernet and Peter Fraser the shiraz in the winery. The best barrels of each are then blended to produce this plush, generous, bold red wine, with dark purple fruit, hints of roasted mocha and mouth-coating tannins.

Made predominantly from a steep block of shiraz vines planted in 2002, with a third of the grapes from the older contour plantings. It’s a pretty, spicy, perfumed, modern expression of shiraz – arguably more “syrah” in style – beautifully poised and seductive. Unlike the other two wines reviewed here, both of which deserve to spend many years in the cellar to reveal their best, this young shiraz is dangerously ready to drink right now – although it will also age well.