Thicker Than Water Obscura Shiraz 2023

The colour is immediately striking. It’s almost opaque with a reddy black hue. This is a wine that’s been built for extended cellaring. It’s sourced from McLaren Vale in a season that produced some very tidy Shiraz. After fermentation, it spent thirty months in a mixture of French and American oak hogsheads, of which about seventy percent was new. And yes, there is some oak there, but boy, there’s so much fruit weight and intensity. It’s hugely concentrated with dark plummy spicy fruits, dark chocolate, a little liqueur, and some sweet vanilla notes. It’s a bold statement of McLaren Vale Shiraz, and yet it possesses a degree of subtle humility that controls it as it extends through to its long finish. Certainly handles some extended cellaring.