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News
97 Points, James Halliday Wine Companion 2018
The colour is bright, the bouquet full of red fruits, darker fruit notes and delicious pepper and spice nuances. These characters flow through to the medium-bodied palate of Shaw + Smith’s most consistently outstanding wine, the ’15 vintage making it seem so easy.
Australian Gourmet Traveller Wine - November 2017
This is a gorgeously lush-fruited, seamless wine loaded with blood plum, black cherry and raspberry aromas, laced with pepper and other spices. Intense flavours, barely perceptible, but supportive oak, silken tannins. A model for the modern Aussie shiraz style.
Tony Love - The Advertiser - July 2017
A leader of the Hills cool-climate shiraz brigade, both in showcasing the region but also wine quality, the S+S team source from increasingly higher altitude and cooler sites, select best clones, sort berries vigorously as well as using 40 per cent whole bunches to achieve such a lithe style, the perfume subtle and seductive to begin before a plump and peppery spiced, medium- weight palate. You go back again and again to discover unveiling pleasures here — lip-smackingly delicious.
Huon Hooke – The Real Review – June 2017
The best shiraz yet under this label: deliciously intense with blood plum, raspberry, black cherry aromas laced with subtle pepper and spice nuances. Marvellous richness and a seamless, soft-textured palate which is fruit-driven, with barely perceptible oak. Drink now or cellar, 95 points.
Wine Description
The Story
The Adelaide Hills was long considered too cool to ripen Shiraz. By the early 2000s, though, the potential for outstanding Shiraz from the right sites in the Adelaide Hills was compelling, and the first Shaw + Smith Shiraz was made in the 2002 vintage. Since then, Shiraz in the Hills has gone from strength to strength, its hallmarks being fragrance, intensity, and medium bodied elegance.
Wine Information
Shaw + Smith Shiraz is a medium bodied cool-climate Shiraz, in which balance is more important than power. The 2015 vintage is true to style with particular opulence and generosity: a reflection of an excellent warm yet even season.
From low yielding vines predominantly at Balhannah, in the central Adelaide Hills, and Macclesfield, the warmer and drier sub-region to the south. Hand picked, sorted and fermented as a combination of whole berries and whole bunches in open fermenters, with gentle plunging and minimal working. Aged in French oak (30% new) for 14 months. 2015 was a remarkable vintage. Above average winter rainfall ensured a good start to the growing season and warm weather in late-December / early-January was moderated by useful rain on the 13th of January. The season concluded with mild, steady conditions and delivered fruit of wonderful quality to the winery.
