Altera Terra Corda Pinot Noir Shiraz 2019
- 95
- $35
- Drink by: 2021-2025
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Pinot Noir and Shiraz are like-minded buddies with a long Australian history dating back to the Hunter Valley and famed Mount Pleasant winemaker, Maurice O’Shea. The blend has seen a welcome resurgence in recent years, and not just in the Hunter. In the Canberra wine region winemakers are used to blending Viognier with Shiraz but Victorian winemaker, Doug Neal, introduces a foreign concept that proves there’s room for some new thinking.
Here, we see Murrumbateman Pinot Noir (70%) and Shiraz (30%) coming together nicely with a percentage of whole berries thrown into the winemaking mix. The result is a textural, lightly savoury interpretation of the great Hunter blend. Red berries, blue berries, pomegranate, spice and a flourish of Canberra shiraz violets envelop the senses. The aromatics are captivating. Smooth across the tongue, velvety, with dark fruits, cacao, all brought into line by a mesh of fine tannins. The wine saw 15 months in oak before blending in September, 2020. Doug Neal is an oak importer/distributor, so the oak is mentioned here for nothing other than to indicate that the guy understands its role and the tightrope walked by winemakers in search of balance. Plenty of good drinking here for now or for later.
Jeni Port is one of Australia’s top wine communicators. Based in Melbourne, Jeni created the first wine column in the (then) Sun News-Pictorial before moving over to The Age and becoming that paper’s longest-serving wine writer. Over the years she has written for most Australian wine magazines and these days calls WinePilot home. She is also a Tasting Panel member on the Halliday Wine Companion. She was named Wine Communicator of the Year and Legend of the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival in 2014 and in 2018 Legend of the Vine. She is a founding board member of Australian Women In Wine and is the co-deputy chair of Australia’s Wine List of the Year Awards and China’s Wine List of the Year Awards.
