Kay Brothers Amery Hillside Shiraz 2003 750mL

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.

Food Matching:

Spice crusted barbecued butterflied leg of lamb, linguine pasta with mushrooms and caramelised onions.

Kay's are specialist traditional red wine makers utilising grapes from their own 22-hectare Amery Vineyard. The grape varieties grown are Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Viognier, Grenache, Mourvedre and Muscat Blanc.

This winery endeavors to produce to make rich full-bodied fruit-driven wines (using the original Open Fermenters and Basket Press) with small oak cask maturation.

The 2003 season was characterised by a very low winter rainfall which signalled the vine to minimize potential crop load. The ripening period was warm producing a crop load of small berries and very pure, ripe fruit characters. Even with a smaller than normal crop load many batches showed wonderful fruit characters due to an excellent skin to pulp ratios and this is evident in the final wine. This year in particular selected parcels of fruit deemed worthy of the Dead Arm label were down 50% in volume.