John Duval Entity Shiraz

When John Duval branched out on his own after his long reign at Penfolds, there was a lot of interest what kind of wine he would produce. Focus on Shiraz? Big, powerful? A lot of oak?

The 2005 John Duval Entity Shiraz is my first taste of his 'standard' Shiraz. The wine is deeply concentrated, with good linear fruit purity and predominantly plummy flavours. Oak, I think French, is present, but the fruit comes through nicely. The overall impression is a bit one-dimensional, but the wine has good length and finishes on fine grained tannins.

Compared to Penfolds, this wine is more fruit dominated and a bit more forward, yet has good depth. This is not a bad effort for a 2005 Barossa wine. I will be interested to taste future vintages.

Score:92/+