Description
98 / 100
James Suckling, JamesSuckling.com
From a great vintage, this has aromas of violets and blueberries with cocoa powder and an array of fragrant spices that offer so much interest already. There's an earthy edge, as well as forest wood and blackberries. More to come. The powerfully defined tannins are commanding and composed and carry ripe blackberries and dark plums very long. The wine feels so complete already. Very drinkable now and for many years ahead.
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.
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