This year, the 2022 8 Acres Shiraz seems to me to be the synthesis of 4 Acres and Johnno's. It has the supple, persistent drive of 4 Acres and the structure and filling of Johnno's. Together, they sing. This is excellent. It is supple, herbal, leafy and spicy, with notes of roses, tobacco, jasmine, lavender, black tea, peppercorns (pink and black and a few Sichuan), pomegranate, raspberry, iodine and blood plum. It is gorgeous, exciting, affirming. The 8 Acres vineyard was planted in 1892 on deep red clay soils over limestone. This was matured in a single three-year-old French oak cask for 14 months. 3,333 bottles filled. 13.5% alcohol, sealed under screw cap. Drink: 2023 - 2048.

Crunchy, brambly and brimming with summer-berry pudding accents, drawn taut by a chord of finely sewn tannins. This is the only wine of the 'Sacred Sites' that is inoculated. A more generous wine than the 4 Acres and easier to love, if not slightly less refined. Mid-weighted, but ever more forceful and kinetic across the mid-drift to the long finish, despite its definitive Hunter mid-weight. Drink or hold. Screw cap.

I include a couple of these in my standing order. I really like the 8A style. Ripe dark raspberry, perfume of roses, some spice, a little new leather. Good volume, pretty red fruits, a bit juicy too, bright acidity sits well in the wine, and there’s a gently chalky and creamy finish of substantial length, and it’s the flow and length that really mark it out as a top wine.