Pertaringa Undercover Shiraz 2020
- 96
- $25
- Drink by: 2022-2032
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This is a serious contender for best value wine of the year. Stunning stuff and criminally under-priced. The name gives a nod to the long history of McLaren Vale supplying top quality fruit to other regions without any recognition – labelling laws have improved that situation. This wine spent eighteen months in a mix of French and American oak, 15% of which were new. Vibrant purple in colour, this is inky, and dense, and full of chocolate notes and all a bit thrilling. There is a plushness here, with cassis, dark chocolate, blackberries, leather and cloves.
Serious concentration, lusciousness and great length, this is powerful but balanced and focused with attractive silky tannins here. Love this – a gorgeous wine. Has a good decade of sensational drinking ahead of it. The intensity of this wine is maintained the entire length. Are there better wines in this collection? Perhaps, but I am not sure that there are any which give the same amount of sheer pleasure. The practice is to always attempt assessing without knowing the price, so I was expecting this to be at least an $80 to $100 bottle. $25? Buy as much as will fit in your cellar.
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.
