Wynns Black Label Old Vines Shiraz 2022

The annual Wynns Day release, the 5th June this year, is always one of the most anticipated days on the Aussie wine calendar, and not for the first time, the prize for the best value goes to this Shiraz (okay, a dead heat with the Black Label Cab). People often forget that Coonawarra’s original reputation was built on cracking Shiraz, before Cabernet muscled in and took over. Fruit included in this wine comes from vines planted as far back as the mid/late 1890s. This is brilliant value and a stonkingly good wine. Black/maroon in colour, this offers a simply gorgeous nose. Intense, plush, balanced and a bit thrilling. Notes of chocolate, violets, mocha, bergamot, cold tea, dry herbs and a little cassis. Wonderful stuff. We also see some coffee grind flavours emerging on the palate with fine, if slightly furry tannins. The wine shows good concentration for the entire length and it is a wine of serious length. Will easily handle ten to twenty years in a good cellar. Love it.

Sweet black berries rise from the glass followed by red fruits, aniseed and a whisper of woodsy oak before a rush of Aussie bush scents and bay leaf. Old Vines – widely known as Black Label Shiraz – unfolds in the glass with ease, unforced, comfortable in its own skin and almost ageless in style (it reminds me a little of Penfolds St. Henri from that point of view). The back label tells us that “vineyards planted in the 1890s and 1920s form the backbone and define” the wine’s style. Old vines are less vigorous and set smaller crops resulting in a greater concentration in fruit flavour. It’s all here to enjoy in a world black and red fruits, chocolate and spice with a touch of savouriness against a background of easy flowing, elegant tannins.