Wolf Blass Platinum Label Medlands Vineyard Barossa Valley Shiraz 2021

First thoughts are, as good as this is, it would be a waste to open it any time in the next four to five years. This is a wine which desperately needs time and if you want something for now, grab the Grey Label McLaren Vale – you’ll save a heap and drink better. But if you want a wine for the long haul, this is the one. Anyone putting this in their cellar and returning to it in a decade will be thrilled. From the famous Medlands Vineyard in the Dorrien sub-region of the Barossa, this provides stunning Shiraz. The wine is fermented to dryness on skins before pressing and racking to a mix of 80% seasoned and 20% new French oak for an 18 month spell. The colour is opaque maroon and the nose is still very much closed, but gives the impression it is bursting at the seams to come forth and reveal all – it just needs time. There is oodles of flavour, blackberries, coffee grinds, vanillin oak, dark chocolate, soy, beef stock and licorice. The wine has focus and direction, with immense underlying power. Good intensity for the full length, silky tannins and a very long finish. The score will undoubtedly rise in the coming years, as this is a ten to twenty year proposition.

Ken Gargett

Contributor at Winepilot

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.

Wine writer and critic