2020 Magill Estate Shiraz

Every year I smell lavender in this glass, and I promptly forget, until the following year. So today, as I smell the 2020 Magill Estate Shiraz, I smell lavender, and it lifts the aromatic profile—Earl Grey tea, Chinese five spice, black fruit and graphite through the finish. This is a supremely elegant wine, a single-vineyard wine (the only one in the 2022 Collection). Open fermenters, basket pressed and barrel fermented. It's all done in situ at Magill. I love this wine; it has powdery tannins, pliable fruit and curvy shape. Gorgeous. Irresistible.

This 2020 single vineyard Shiraz from the suburbs of Adelaide offers up an enticing, youthful mix of moderately powered dried Italian herb, mulberry and fruit pastille aromas with French oak well matched. It’s a firm and sinewy style thanks to juicy acidity and dense tannins with meaty/spicy flavours providing some support although the structure currently seems a little heavy on a lingering finish. It needs time to settle and find its groove.

5.2-ha property. Open fermenters, then in a basket press that’s only 10 m from the barrels, so compact is this historic operation. 15 months in French oak (30% new, 40% one year old) and American oak (30% one year old) hogsheads. TA 7 g/l, pH 3.63. Mid to dark crimson. Complex, complete, well-integrated nose – different form the earlier wines. Still some tannin on the end. But revitalising, if very ripe, fruit on the palate. (JR)