Haselgrove Catkin McLaren Vale Shiraz 2023
- 94
- $40
- Drink by: 2025-2037
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Catkins are the bunches of Hazel flowers seen in late winter and believed to signify the origin of harvest. The fruit used here hails from four separate sites in McLaren Vale. Each parcel is made discretely and only blended after twenty months maturation in a combination of new and older French oak. The colour here is a deep purple in the shape of a big, bold and full throttle McLaren Vale Shiraz. It offers good concentration with notes of blackcurrants, bay leaves, cloves, black olives, black fruits, cassis and especially chocolate. With time in the glass, the wine opened up even more and those black fruits, especially cassis, really came to dominate. Soft, supple, impressively long and with silky tannins, this is really good. Enjoy it for at least the next ten to twelve years, likely longer.
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.
