Description
This leading producer from Geelong in Victoria is on song with its fine wines!
A deep, dark, complex nose offering chocolate, coffee, blackberry, cherry and meat characters. These characters carry to the palate which is very full, rich and powerful. There is excellent balance and integration of flavours, with dark chocolate, coffee and tar characters driving the length. Plenty of lovely, ripe tannin also keeps the palate going on and on.
About the 2009 vintage, winemaker Michael Glover had this to say .. “The drought affected 2009 growing season led to yields being down by 2/3’s and this has resulted in wines with greater concentration of flavours. The shiraz was 100% whole bunch fermented to enhance interest and intrigue. Following fermentation the wine spent 2 years in a combination of new and aged French oak puncheons and barriques.”
Reviews:
95 points James Halliday “The drought reduced the yield of this wine by two-thirds, resulting in a very concentrated wine; a 100% whole bunch fermentation was followed by two years maturation in new and used French puncheons and barriques; the colour is developed (reflecting the wine’s elevage), but the bouquet and medium-bodied palate are full of spicy notes woven through the black cherry and plum fruit, oak very evident, but balanced.”
95 points Mike Bennie, The Wine Front… “2009 is the starting point from where Bannockburn shiraz starts to talk, become really interesting’, offers winemaker Michael Glover. The 2009 marked the first year Bannockburn went 100% whole bunch in the ferment, ‘pinot noir and whole bunch can give amazing perfume, sweetness, brilliant spice, but shiraz and whole bunch brings textural drive and seriousness, and the meaty, gamey, sausage and savoury things that can be confronting to some expecting more ‘typical’ Australian shiraz’, explains Glover … Layers and layers and layers to this wine. Perfume requires attention with its meatiness and flecks of herbal complexity – such wonderful savouriness here. Texture is dry, chewy, tannin-driven and yet soupy in depth, like a complex bouillon laboured over by a chef seeking finesse of flavour but a strength too. This wine is seriously deep and glorious to sip – a wine you savour and don’t want to finish, swirling darkly and brooding as it evolves even in glass. Glory.”
RRP $52
