In the red wine group, only two Grenaches featured at this tasting.
The 2021 Old Vine Grenache strikes with an intense aroma of red berry fruit. This is a big and quite fruity wine with raspberry and red cherry flavours. This wine is quite ripe, round, and soft - a real crowd pleaser one might say.
Score: 92/+
The 2021 Ovitelli Grenache could not be more different. The colour is lighter, and on the palate, this is a finer, more elegant, and quite ethereal wine. Yet the wine has good intensity, built on fine, silky tannins. The soil for this wine is deep sand, and the maceration is very gentle in ceramic eggs. This is a sensational Grenache, only medium-body, but perfectly made.
Score: 96/+++
The idea of the Shiraz tastings was to compare a recent release with an older version.
It started with the 2015 King's Wood Shiraz. This is a big and ripe wine with jammy blackberry and plum flavours. The wine has good length, but I found the finish a bit flat (91 points). The 2021 King's Wood Shiraz is a bit lighter, still dark, but the fruit spectrum has now moved to blackberry and blueberry (92 points).
For reasons unknown, the order was switched for the Ironheart Shiraz. We tasted first the 2020 Ironheart Shiraz. This is a more impressive wine than the King's Wood, with black and blue fruits. The palate is elegant, quite soft and gentle. Savoury notes and velvety tannins deliver an appealing mouthfeel.
Score: 94/++
This was compared to the 2014 Ironheart Shiraz. This wine was more concentrated, with deeper fruit weight and quite a long finish. The question was, was this a function of age, vintage or style difference? According to Peter Fraser, a bit of all three.
Score: 94/++
It is clear, Yangarra is moving towards more elegant wines in its reds. The latest Ovitelli Grenache and Ironheart Shiraz are quite sophisticated wines, without giving up Australian typicity of these varieties.
2 comments:
Interesting comments. Yangarra are one of my favourite grenache producers out of the Vale. I did try a '19 Ovitelli a few weeks back. Elegant to a tee but was perhaps hoping for a bit more as it felt almost too fine to me? Will need to give the '21 a go methinks.
Keen to hear your Standish thoughts too! 🙂
old ironheart vintages are definitely bigger and more intense. if you do get a chance to try the 07, you will notice that the move to elegant/lighter (in weight) reds has been going for some time..
The Ovitelli is phenomenal and can get lost in a fruit dense grenache lineup at times, just needs a pinot glass and an hour or two to start singing in my experience.
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