Large Format Collection

Juicy with ripe red fruits, some pot ash and a savoury finish, ‘The Barry Bros.’ Shiraz/Cabernet has managed to far exceed all expectations. With no new oak used, this is a wine that is totally focused on providing clean, ripe fruit and pure, primary flavours. Nothing too complex just pleasant, easy-drinking wine in a classic Australian blend. Plum and cassis up front mix with mocha and char towards the back with only hints of fruit sweetness appearing towards the finish. You really are getting a lot out of this entry level red from Jim Barry. – FWC.

This is 100% Pinot Noir wine that is full flavoured, rich and very dry. In fact it is bone dry when most other Brut NV’s contain around 10gm/lt of sugar (and legally up to 15gm/lt). To achieve the kind of great balance this wine possesses, the base wine quality needs to be very high as little sugar can hide excessive acidity or phenolics, and even add to the perception of flavour. So good is this wine that the absence of any sugar only adds to its quality and uniqueness. One of the best books on Champagne ͞4000 Champagnes͟ is written by the Swede Richard Juhlin, and he writes ͞A tremendously powerful Champagne. The mature reserve wines give weight and softness and rounds off the completely dry aftertaste. Bollinger-like.͟The best quality Champagne on the market at anywhere near this price! –Ian Cook, FWC.

Goldkapsel indicates that the wine is made from later picked, higher must-weight (Beerenauslese+ level) and often botrytised berries. These extraordinary wines live and evolve for many decades. They can certainly work with appropriately matched desserts (fruit based). These wines, as the name clearly suggests, are designated by a golden capsule. These are some of the most revered Rieslings on the planet.

This is Wehlener Sonnenuhr writ-large. As you would expect at this level and from this vintage, this is an astonishingly beautiful wine. Rich, intense and profoundly multifaceted yet nonetheless wonderfully ethereal and refined. Somehow – and don’t ask us how - a tightly coiled seam of mineral slatey-ness and tangy grip keeps the stunning package of concentrated stone fruits, pastilles, smoke, pungent citrus and white florals, all tightly woven and ravishingly refreshing. It’s an Auslese for the ages, so much so that you could fill a room with this wine’s ambition.

Golden yellow. Rich, smoky aromas of dried apricot, baked apple and white raisins. Sumptuous papaya fruit texture with the weight of honey-glazed botrytis is elevated by an ethereal minerality. Complex brown spices on the impressively long finish. One of the three finest ausleses of the vintage. 98 points, Stephen Tanzer's International Wine Cellar, Jan/Feb 12

An hour after opening: Very dark blackish crimson. Very powerful and intense. Tar and alcohol and sweet American oak – still very embryonic. Tough oaky finish. Not mellifluous. Very tough finish. Sweet and medicinal but it may age more gracefully. Tough finish with the acidity very obvious. Not harmonious. 24 hours later: very round and supple and seductive – enormous power and only very slight syrupiness. The fruit, acidity and tannin had harmonised, as they tend to do in bottle over the years, so that the aggressive elements were muted and what was dominant was the intensely South Australian fruit – still tar and sweet oak with more than a hint of cough medicine, but gentle. 18+ Points/Drink 2015-2025 - Jancis Robinson, Jancis Robinson.com

It is always a treat to taste Australia’s most famous wine, Penfolds’ Grange cuvee (the word Hermitage has been dropped because of legal issues). The 2001 Grange is one of the few vintages of this cuvee to be composed of 100% Shiraz (the others being 1951, 1952, 1963, 1999, and 2000). Aged 17 months in 100% American oak, and tipping the scales at 14.5% alcohol, the 2001 is undeniably one of the top examples of this wine. At this stage, it appears to eclipse the 1998 and 1996. Inky/blue/purple to the rim, with a stunning perfume of blueberries, blackberries, chocolate, graphite, and earth, it boasts good acidity, huge tannins, magnificent concentration, and a multilayered, textured mouthfeel. It is a big, but impeccably well-balanced Shiraz that should shed some of its structure and tannin over the next 4-5 years. 98+ Points/Drink 2010-2030+ - Robert Parker, The Wine Advocate