Brockenchack Zip Lane Shiraz 2018
- 91
- $28
- Drink by: 2021-2034
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The name, Brockenchack, is an amalgam of the Harch’s four grandchildren, BROnte, MaCKENzie, CHArli and JaCK. The family were great lovers of the Barossa Valley and especially its Shiraz, even though they were located on Queensland’s beautiful Sunshine Coast. A move was made and the family purchased the famous Tanunda Cellars bottle shop in the late ’90s. Trevor also expanded operations to represent wines, especially from the Barossa Valley, in Queensland. The move into making wines seemed inevitable. Their property includes some very old vines, including for this Zip Line Shiraz, planted in 1927. Their Riesling is even older. They now have 43 acres of vines and this has become a real family operation. The wine is named after a zip line on the property.
From a single vineyard in the Eden Valley, this is an opaque black/purple in colour. The nose, coiled and intense, gives up plums, black cherries, chocolate, coffee beans and mocha. The palate adds leather and cloves and, towards the finish, some sour cherries. Good acidity, focus and length, this wine has a good decade or more ahead of it and while pleasing now, is going to get considerably better. Richly flavoured, this is a fine Barossa Shiraz.
Ken was born and bred in Brisbane, Queensland. He had a non-trendy, perfectly happy childhood, in a family convinced alcohol meant instant condemnation to Hades. But a break fishing on the Great Barrier Reef, and some good wine, started a serious obsession that eventually took over. It did not stop Ken being chastised later for drinking Pol champagne, disgusted he’d drink anything made by a Cambodian dictator. Now, Ken mostly writes on wine, champagne and spirits for various newspapers, magazines and books, but is perhaps best known for his work in The Courier Mail. He also has a little sideline writing on cigars, fishing, travel and food. When not writing, fly-fishing for trout in NZ or bonefish on the flats of Cuba, travelling or smoking cigars, he is no doubt following a variety of sporting teams – the occasionally glorious Queensland Reds rugby, the dysfunctional Washington Redskins, the dodgy Arsenal and especially revels in the world restored to its proper axis with the return of the Ashes to their rightful home.
