If you want to step it up from the Spinifex, you could try Clarendon Hills. Clarendon Hills is squarely aimed at the US market: a large number of small volume, single vineyard wines, most of them Shiraz. Mr. Bratasiuk calls them Syrah. This is as good a misnomer as you can get in the wine world. Syrah is usually associated with fresh, cool climate wines, yet Clarendon Hills wines are hot climate, big and ripe.
The other day I had the 2006 Clarendon Hills Liandra Syrah. Can it age? On the positive side, this wine certainly has intense concentrated fruit, but the blackcurrant and black plum flavours are chewy. Really, we are talking about overripe and dead fruit here. The wine is not harmonious, with sweet fruit sensations in the middle of the tongue, and broad and rough sensations on the edges of the tongue. The finish is simple. The wine is not over the hill, it never managed to climb it.
Score: 84/--
PS: This is clearly not a positive review, but if you can manage to get your hands on an Astralis from a good year, you will experience something more similar to Grange than any other Australian wine can manage.
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