Curtis Gladiator Shiraz 2022
- 95
- $228
- Drink by: 2026-2051
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This top-of-the-range Shiraz from Curtis comes off 80-year-old vines in McLaren Vale. The fruit is incredibly concentrated and rich, with that wonderful mix of dark plum, black cherry, and blackberry exploding on the palate, which is supported by a combination of French and American oak, where it spent 36 months. So yes, there is oak evident but hardly excessive, and the deep and concentrated fruit really needed that oak influence to bring the best out. It’s a wine that’s built for extended cellaring, but so harmonious and integrated and poised it is at the moment that it really does provide wonderful current drinking.
Ray Jordan has been writing about wine for more than 40 years. His first articles were published in the early issues of national wine magazine Winestate in the late 1970s when he worked in Sydney as a newspaper correspondent. From 1989 Ray wrote more than 3000 columns as a regular newspaper wine columnist. He currently writes a regular column for the special business publication Business News and is one of the main contributors to national wine platform Wine Pilot. In 2017 Ray co-authored The Way it Was – A History of The Early Days of the Margaret River Wine Industry and previously wrote Wine in the Blood: Australia’s Family Wine Estates, published in Mandarin and English. In 2011 Ray was awarded WA Wine Press Club Jack Mann Memorial Medal for his contribution to the WA wine industry. His love of wine is as strong as his love of the blues and tasting the thousands of wines that cross his bench each year allows him to indulge in both.
