Curtis Small Batch McLaren Vale Shiraz 2019
- 92
- $80
- Drink by: 2022-2032
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One of the great wine styles from this country, McLaren Vale Shiraz. The grapes for this wine were hand harvested from 80-year-old vines. They were gently destemmed and then cold-soaked for two weeks, before fermentation took place over a similar period. Then a gentle pressing into a mix of new and 2-year-old American Oak barrels. Deep garnet in colour, this is a full flavoured style offering ripe fruits, tobacco leaves, dry herbs, chocolate, coffee beans, cranberries, bergamot and warm earth. Noticeably youthful, it also has a seductive texture and good focus with excellent length through to silky tannins. Attractive now, but even better if one can hold off for a couple of years and then drink it over the next decade, at which time the score will surely rise.
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.
