Clarendon Hills Astralis Syrah 2012

98+ / 100

Lisa Perrotti-Brown, The Wine Advocate

Medium to deep garnet/purple, the 2012 Astralis (Shiraz) starts off with complex, meaty and earthy aromas wafting around a core of blackberry preserves, preserved plums, and mulberries with hints of licorice, Chinese five spice and potpourri. Full-bodied, rich and concentrated, the multi-layered flavors have very spicy accents and are framed by ripe, grainy tannins. It has a very long and elegant finish with hints of exotic spices. finish

Clarendon Hills Astralis Syrah vineyard was discovered by Roman Bratasiuk in 1990. He didn’t have much in the way of winery resources in those days so he picked the vineyard by hand and stayed up that night crushing the fruit in a bucket with an empty Burgundy bottle. It was grassroots stuff and as rustic as you could imagine. But the wines were excellent and he sold out year on year and created a little winery that made small amounts of single vineyard expressions from very special old vine patches throughout Blewitt Springs, McLaren Vale. Across the first vintages 1990 to 1993 the wine was titled ‘Clarendon Hills Shiraz’ however in 1994 the wine was rebranded to Clarendon Hills Astralis Shiraz off the back of his belief this wine was out of this world. Astralis 1994 was in fact Australia’s first $100 bottle of wine and it was adorned in a black 360 ˚ label peppered with golden stars to emphasise the definition of Astralis “pertaining to the stars'”. It was a thing of beauty.