Gundog Estate Hilltops Shiraz No. 2 2024
- 95
- $36
- Drink by: 2025-2035
Share
2024 has proved to be an excellent vintage for the Hilltops region. The aim here was to highlight the savouriness and the spice that the region can offer. The result is a cracking wine and you will be hard pressed to find better value this year. Inky dark purple/maroon in colour, this is plush, dense and alluring. We have notes of plums, mulberries, dark chocolate and more on the nose. There is a note of black sapote, which for some reason seems largely unknown here. It hails from Central America and Cuba and is also called the black chocolate pudding fruit, understandably so. Some consider it the best fruit in the world. It is wonderfully decadent, fitting for this wine. The wine is well balanced and so utterly seductive. There is very good length through to silky tannins and it should drink beautifully over the next six to ten years. Love it and what wonderful value it is.
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.
