Hickinbotham Brooks Road Shiraz 2022
- 96
- $90
- Drink by: 2025-2033
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20% whole bunch 30% destemmed and berry sorted and 50% crushed to open top fermenters. 20 days on skins and kept on lees in 30% new French oak puncheons. A further 12 months in French and Austrian 25 hectolitre foudres. A pool of dark berries, Holly, bilberry and blackcurrant. There is a generous spread of olive tapenade that leads back around to a halo of blue tinged fruit. Prune and blueberries. Oak shows in maple and red oak, undercurrents of savoury tobacco and carob too. Just when you think this may be quite a heady wine, acidity dances in with light feet, making for a medium bodied but grainy textured drop. The Clarendon potency is all here with a nod to dried herbs and wildly fragrant spices. A complex and detailed wine that you can ponder for hours and marvel for days. Drink now or will cellar well for another 6-8 years. A bucket list pairing would be a hearty pork and mushroom pie with gravy poured down the centre funnel. Lode Pies signature Pithovier would do it justice.
Shanteh cut her teeth at Sydney’s Award-Winning Quay restaurant where she worked for over a decade and was Head Sommelier from 2018 till 2022. She has been nominated for the Good Food Guide Sommelier of the Year award on three occasions and claims that her experience as a Len Evans scholar as one of the highlights of her career. Shanteh hosts her own weekly podcast ‘Over A Glass’ with the Deep in the Weeds Network and spends her time writing for various publications and judging at numerous wine shows across the country.
