Lights Valley Colonel Shiraz 2017
- 93
- $120
- Drink by: 2024-2034
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This wine spent a year maturing in a mix of French and American barrels and hogsheads, after fifteen days on skins, before blending and spending another year in oak. Under diam. Very dark magenta, the nose gives us spicy notes with raspberries and blackberries, a real fruit salad mix of dark and red fruits. Soy, cloves, and coffee grinds carried by good length, focus and fine tannins. Perhaps a little muted on opening, but give it a decant for an hour or two and it blossoms. Should age beautifully over the next six to ten years.
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.
