Grape
Shiraz
Ratings
*Penfolds – Icon & Luxury Range
Exceptional – by Langton’s Classification Australian Wine
Robert Parker 90
Jeremy Oliver 87
Wine Spectator 94
Tasting Notes
Colour : Medium-full red/purple colour
Nose : It is a beautifully weighted and concentrated wine
combining very intense, ripe plummy aromas
with smoky vanillin oak.
Palate : Already, the wine is supremely complex and
harmonious, with ripe plum and coffee-like
luscious fruit, integrated oak, fine tannins and
excellent length.
-by Official Website
A blend of 87% Shiraz and 13% Cabernet Sauvignon, Max Schubert commented in 1993 that this vintage was "ot quite up to the mark." For technicians, this was the last vintage to use white capsules on the bottle, with Penfolds moving to the crimson red foils in 1980. The wine is deep ruby garnet with an unusual nose of root vegetables mixed with cola, caramel, black currant, and tar. Relatively attenuated in the finish, but sweet on the attack, this wine seems to be narrowing out, with the tannins becoming increasingly dominant. If this is typical of the direction the evolution of this wine is taking, it is not reassuring. The wine is certainly still full, but may ultimately tend to dry out rather than blossom and prove expansive. This is a vintage to monitor closely.
-by Robert Parker
Its amber-tinged red colour and its sweet, confectionary and varnishy
aroma of boiled raspberries, plums and vanilla oak suggest an atypical
Grange. Lacking richness and ripeness, it?ˉs simple and smooth, entirely
un-Grange-like and disappointing.
–by Jeremy Oliver
Big and broad, it’s gloriously spicy and rich, pouring out its
licorice-scented plum, prune, berry and smoke flavors like a fountain,
yet it remains harmonious and marvelously balanced. Drink now, or let it
grow.
-by Wine Spectator