Monthly Picks: November '14 - Australian Shiraz

This month's wine picks are awfully late, due, no small part to the lengthy time spent on planning an upcoming trek to Australia. With some trip planning time devoted to researching the best local wine shops in the cities we'll be visiting, it seems fitting to devote this month's wine picks to the very wines I hope to source new vintages of while on my trip.

Tahbilk 2007 Shiraz - $20
The acid is crisp and the tannins are fine resulting in a wine that offers good balance between its black fruit and oak characters with a full but not gooey mouth feel. The developing bouquet greets you with pleasing green spice, oak, cherry cola, anise and chocolate aromas. The finish is moderate with tart red fruits flavours and some lingering cracked black pepper notes.
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Mitolo Wines 2009 Jester - $25
Aged in 2nd, 3rd and 4th fill French oak for only 9 months, this potent Shiraz seems to get most of its character and tannin bite directly from the sunny, dry McLaren Vale vineyards. This makes for a more approachable wine than many of its high tannin, overly oaked, down-under cousins, though the expected intensity is still present.
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Wolf Blass Wines 2008 Grey Label Shiraz - $30
Intense, dark cherry, dark cocoa, cardamon and peppercorn aromas pounce on your nose when you bring it to within a few inches from the glass. The finish is mouth-watering and oaky with residual cherry puree and anise notes lingering moderately.
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Two Hands Wines 2008 Gnarly Dudes Shiraz - $40

Tart and tannic at times, but oh so tasty. A sublime nose with layers and layers of complex, highly concentrated aromas ranging from sweet eucalyptus to spicy dark chocolate to savory toasted oak. The tart palate explodes with concentrated flavours of dark fruits and Christmas Cake spice.

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Glaetzer Wines 2010 Amon-Ra - $88
This wine is chalk-full of tasting note favourites for intense Shiraz like cherry purée, floral, white pepper, cinnamon, orange zest, fig, mocha, blueberry and vanilla. What sets this wine apart from other highly extracted Aussie Shiraz is its inherent ability to minimize the extraction to the consumer, producing an elegant, cellar-worthy icon.
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Mollydooker Wines 2009 Carnival of Love - $125
When compared to the winery's iconic Velvet Glove, the Carnival of Love shiraz is a bit more attention seeking and blatantly superb. The Avis rental cars of elite level Shiraz - it has to try a little harder. This effort tends to make it, again comparatively, a better bargain than the aforementioned icon wine, delivering most of the refinement and all, if not more, of the concentration and pure expression of fruit.
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 - Liam Carrier ©copyright 2014 IconWines.ca