It is an elegant wine with a nose layered and complex with berry fruits, cedar, chocolate and plum characters. It has an amazing structure that is defined and long, and fruit flavours that are seamless, silky and powerful. It is a fine example of Cabernet Sauvignon from McLaren Vale.

This blend represents the newest bottled offerings from this Rutherglen producer, an area that produces spectacular fortifieds, especially the Muscats and Tokays (actually Muscadelle). Its freshness, good acidity, soaring aromatics, and unctuous flavors must be tasted to be believed. Drink now or cellar.

The grapes are handpicked and fermented with natural yeasts in open stainless steel tanks at temperatures up to 32 degree Celsius. All the pressings are returned to the 100% new French oak barriques and the maturation lasts for 18 months before bottling without fining or filtration.

This is always the most beautiful wine in the cellar and is the flagship of the Clarendon Hills Syrah Range.

 

The nose shows intense blackcurrant and cranberry fruit, and the subtle cedary cinnamon spice, barrel-ferment and oak derived aromas, violet and mint scents, as well as liquorice and chocolate smells. Interwined is this wounderful green edge that lifts the wine into a cool climate sepctrum which typifies the cold year. These aromas combine with some cassis, blueberry, and cranberry, with lingering mocha and plumy fruit and are just showing through amongst a long, intense vibrant, gritty fruit tannin finish.

 

Chester Osborn, the remarkable person behind this enormous array of both impeccably high quality and value-priced wines, deserves considerable accolades for what he is able to achieve at all price ranges. If you love Australian wines, d’Arenberg is a winery to seek out as these offerings all possess abundant soul as well as character. In short, the accolades that proprietor/winemaker Chester Osborn receives not only from The Wine Advocate, but virtually everybody in the wine world, are all well deserved.

 

Blend is made up of a huge list of varieties including Verdelho, Grenache, Shiraz, Touriga, White Muscat and Palomino. Some of these components date back over 30 years, and are responsible for adding the lusciousness and the distinctive rancio (butterscotch) characters we find in this wine. This year I topped up the old base blend with a little old Verdelho, and Touriga. Plenty of rich, rancio, butterscotch flavours and fine drying oak tannins, warm alcohol and fantastic length of flavour. Drink now or cellar.

The fruit is 100% McLaren Vale Grenache hand-picked from two very small 1910's planting's at Blewett Springs. The 2004 mild season really suited these hardy old vines with their deep roots. Medium red purple in colour.

 

The wine displays complex leather & spice bouquet with notes of cherry and prune. An elegant multi-layered palate wich has savoury herb notes with subtle berry flavours gracefully balanced with lively acidity and powder dry tannin. The seamless smooth palate finishes refreshingly dry with lingering warmth.. Shows finesse.

 

Picked from our own Semillon vines planted in the early 1960's. All of our dessert wines are made the same way. We do not use Botrytis infected fruit or fortification in any of our dessert wines. After hand picking the grapes are placed into trays and semi dried.

 

This drying process highlights and intensifies natural flavours and aromas. Giving a very long clean and crisp finish combined with wonderful fruit.

 

The RunRig has often drawn comparison with the beautifully fragrant & tautly structured wines produced from the steep slopes of the Northern Rhône Valley’s Appellation of Côte Rôtie.

 

The RunRig is a structured, muscular wine with phenomenal density, dry vintage port-like concentration, and magnificent notes of smoke, blackberries, cassis, leather and coffee. A hint of viognier’s sweet marmalade character comes through as the wine sits in the glass.

The Highland clans used a “RunRig” system to distribute land amongst their clansmen in a series of widely dispersed holdings.

The emphasis not on any one farm, but rather the communal element of the whole. Shiraz from old dry grown vineyards is blended with viognier, complementing the strengths and complexities of these individual parcels of fruit, whilst giving the resulting wine a further dimension..

 

 

 

2003 vintage:

Winter started with heavy rains, which tapered off resulting in below average rainfalls and a successful budburst in early spring. Flowering and set occurred in November, promoting uniform berry development and bunch numbers were on average for the season. Veraison for Shiraz and Cabernet started in late January with the older vines producing lighter crops. The height of summer saw 65mm of rainfall in the last week of February requiring swift viticultural practices to prevent the onset of disease and fungus. Our 2003 Barossa Shiraz displayed great colour and depth of flavour. Yields overall were below the long-term average but the grapes were of good quality and the resultant wines display terrific potential. 

Wine description:

Bright purple plum colour. Glossy red fruits and spiced plum cake on the nose with a hint of vanilla spice. The palate shows swathes of rich generous fruit, ripe blackberry intermingled with soft cedary spice. A fine coating of gentle tannins washes over the palate with a long and persistent finish to end.