Home > Hatch Barossa St Johns’ Shiraz 2022

Hatch Barossa St Johns’ Shiraz 2022

Share

One thing I learnt about Hatch with this latest batch of wines is that he is a big jazz fan – not something we share, but if people really want to listen to a cage of starving cats caught in a car wreck, who am I to deny them. Just as long as they can make wines like this. The St Johns vineyard is one of the most elevated in the Barossa, at 300 metres. Bordering such famous sub-regional names as Koonunga, Moppa and Ebenezer, the fruit is fermented on skins in small, open top fermenters for five to ten days. This is a deep magenta. Notes of dry herbs, cloves, black fruits, aniseed, mulberries and tobacco leaves plus some cassis on the palate. This is a little more savoury in style and at this early stage, exhibits fractionally more oak influence with good grip and excellent length. Enjoy over the next eight to ten years.

Ken Gargett

Contributor at Winepilot

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.

Wine writer and critic