Schubert Estate The Gander Reserve Shiraz 2015
- 98
- $258
- Drink by: 2025 - 2040
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This is the big gun. As is usual, the grapes are hand-picked, before destemming. The grapes are from Block 3 within the vineyard, planted in 1996. They are fermented with wild yeast in the usual 5 tonne open top fermenters with twice daily pumpovers. After fermentation the wine is basket-pressed, both free-run juice and pressings, into 225-litre French oak barriques, 100% new. It is left to mature for two years before careful barrel selection which determines what makes the cut. Previously, only 2004, 2007, 2008 and 2013 have been released.
This is one of those utterly beguiling Barossa shiraz which is a bit like drinking Christmas cake. Plush and supple with glorious aromas. Violets, tobacco leaf, leather, cloves, coffee beans, liquorice, chocolate and mocha. Lots of chocolate. Dried fig, cassis and yet more chocolate. Cedar, vanilla and even some delicatessen notes. This is a wine which is generous in every way. No doubt it will age for many years and improve over the course of time. But if you can keep your hands off it for long then, as they say in the classics, you are a better man than I am, Gungadin.
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.
