Tasting Notes

WA97

This 2013 Shiraz St Henri follows in the blockbuster footsteps of the 2010 and 2012. The blend is 96% Shiraz with 4% Cabernet Sauvignon and the fruit sources are far and wide, including a real mix of terroirs: McLaren Vale, Adelaide Hills, Barossa Valley, Clare Valley, Padthaway and Port Lincoln. It spent 12 months in 50+-year-old casks. Deep garnet-purple colored, the youthfully reticent nose is complex, offering loam, aged meat, licorice, tar, scorched earth, fenugreek and cloves over a cherry cordial, blueberry pie and dried mulberries core. The medium to full-bodied palate reveals lovely, understated elegance and depth with a firm backbone of ripe, grainy tannins and many fruit and spice layers emerging on the finish. This is one for the long-long haul and, at a fraction of the price of Grange, should be where the smart money goes for stocking the cellar.

JS96

This is a very tidy and neatly framed edition of St. Henri, offering a sense of elegance married with deep-set concentration and rich fruit flavors. Redder fruits do run through to blackberries and various shades of cherries, and there's also a savory, dark and brooding edge. The palate has super-deep, rich and balanced style to it, making this one of the most complete wines in the collection. A plethora of dark berries, dark plums and ginger biscuits come to the fore as this closes off. What a delicious long, deep and slate-like finish. Balanced enough to broach now, but this will hit a magic drinking window from 2025 through to 2035 — or perhaps even further afield. 96% shiraz and just 4% cabernet sourced from McLaren Vale, Adelaide Hills, Barossa Valley, Clare Valley, Padthaway and Port Lincoln.

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