Ken Gargett

Australian New Releases / Claymore Wines The Fields of Anfield Road 2024 ($75) – When one thinks of Claymore wines, two things come to mind – cracking Clare Valley wines and an unfathomable devotion to the Liverpool Football Club (I guess you can’t have everything). Those who follow the sport will know that the mugsmashers, as they are fondly known, snuck in to win the competition earlier this year. To celebrate that, they have released this Shiraz Cabernet blend and a bottle can be yours for literally just 0.00000025% of what the Club has spent on players in the off-season. 

An inky maroon hue with a purple rim, there are notes of cocoa powder, blackberries, cassis, mocha, cold tea, dried herbs, chocolate and smoked meats. The oak is deftly handled and there is an intriguing saline/iodine notes running through the wine. Good balance and focus, with bright acidity, there is excellent length. It will drink well over the next decade and continue to improve. Those who are not fans of Liverpool are probably hoping that this is a one-off. 93.

Brokenwood Graveyard Shiraz 2018 / Few wines have had a harder act to follow than this one, on the heels of the stupendous 2018. And if one may begin with a spoiler, it has given the task one almighty shake. Another spoiler, there will be no 2020 Graveyard (2021 is likely but not yet confirmed) so don’t hesitate. 

Tight and youthful with firm tannins. Flavours of chocolate, plums, dry herbs, black fruits, fresh leather. It doesn’t quite have the almost-unique combination of exuberance and finesse the 2018 exhibits but it has other charms. It would be fair to suggest that this is more typically Graveyard in character than the ’18. Complexity and length and a cracking future, backed by juicy acidity. 98. If not for the 2018, we’d be in awe of this wine. Well, we still are. 98p

Australian Latest Releases: Henschke Hill of Grace 2022 / At the outset, I’ll confess that I have not scored this vintage of Hill of Grace quite as highly as I have many of the recent releases (in fairness, we are talking wafer-thin margins at the very highest levels). That is not because I think it is any less of a wine, quite the contrary, but because at the moment I think it is so tight, coiled and reticent that it simply will not give of itself what it can and what it will. In ten or twenty or even thirty years, I have not the least doubt that it will sit comfortably with any recent release, even the glorious 2021 vintage. The wine is, of course, from that famous patch of ancient vines in the Hill of Grace vineyard in the Eden Valley which was planted around 1860. Maturation is in older French oak hogsheads for twenty months. It is, as ever, an astonishing achievement. A purple/maroon hue with a hint of the haze of the Blue Mountains. The nose offers notes of black fruits, chocolate, florals, smoked meats, cloves, licorice, black olives, mocha and coffee beans. A wine that is generous, still obviously very youthful, and with serious concentration. On the palate, we see the emergence of notes of blueberries and the herb garden nature of the wine. There is immaculate balance and extraordinary length through to firm, very fine tannins on a lingering finish. The wine is perhaps marginally more savoury than it appears in some years. There is good energy here and underlying power which suggests that leaving the wine alone for the next five to eight years would be in everyone’s interests, before drinking it over the following thirty to fifty, if you think you’ll be around that long.

Latest Australian Fine Wines: Xavier Avon Chardonnay 2024 / The Avon vineyard of just a single hectare was originally planted in 1987. It is located at Maffra in Gippsland. Fermentation was in barrel and the wine then spent a further ten months on lees. Maturation was in French oak, 30% new. Under Diam. 

The colour is a deep yellow straw. This is a spicy rounded style of Chardonnay, broad in structure – a little reminiscent of those crowd-pleasing, old fashioned Chardies and this will no doubt be very popular. Hints of oak still in the process of integration, along with nuts, mandarins, peaches, almonds and nectarines. A wine of medium length which lingers pleasantly. Enjoy over the next four to six years, but there is still room for it to improve. 92.

Penfolds Collection 2025 with perfect Grange: The expectations for the 2021 Grange, were simply that this had to be a great Grange. Anything short of that might even be deemed a failure and this is indeed an extraordinary Grange. Quite simply, a wow wine. As always, a variety of regions contributed – the Barossa Valley, McLaren Vale and Clare Valley. As is usual, though not inevitable, there is a dollop of Cabernet Sauvignon in the blend, 6% for 2021, and the wine spent a year and a half maturing in new American hogsheads. No wonder Peter Gago’s response was a face-splitting smile and to confirm he was “very, very pleased”. 

Maroon/black in hue, one simply gets lost in the nose, just endlessly sniffing the most glorious cassis notes, along with black fruits, blueberries, coffee beans, aniseed, mulberries, delicatessen meats, tobacco leaves, plums and graphite. The wine is seamless, intense and immaculate with knife-edge balance. It simply dances with joy. There oak is there, undeniably, but it is so well handled that you almost have to think twice. So complex already, and yet so harmonious and decadent. Silky tannins, bright acidity, the intensity never wavers for an instant and there is incredible length – Rutherglen muscat length. This is as close to a perfect Grange as I can imagine. Fifty years, if you think you can last that long (or want very grateful grandkids). A Lord-take-me-now wine, if ever there was one. 100.