Many people may tell you that Australian Shiraz is not a wine to age. The bottle I'm drinking tonight proves them wrong, at least a bit. Blackwing is the lower priced wine from the Step Rd. winery. Unlike their main wine which is from Langhorn Creek, the Blackwing is from the "South Australia" appellation. The bottle I'm drinking is from the 2003 vintage, which was a pretty good year for this wine, although not quite as good as the outstanding 2002.
When it was young, about 5-6 years ago, it had a flavor profile that you might expect of a typical Aussie Shiraz; lots of fruit, a little spicy, but a little more elegant than the $10 and under bottles (Blackwing has sold for around $12-15; I have no idea what I paid for this bottle).
With a few years of age, it has lost some of the bright fruit flavors, and developed considerable complexity. The fruit flavors now tend toward more dried fruits, with dried cherries being the predominate one. But the magic is on the mid-palate and finish. There are now hints of leather, coffee, and even a slight earthiness similar to what I've encountered in a nice Croze-Hermitage. With a little aeration (IOW, slurping it), a wonderful dark chocolate sensation comes through on the finish, and while the finish is not the longest I've encountered, it is very nice, and at least as much as would be expected from a wine in this category. In my opinion, this wine has probably reached its peak, or at least is very close. I'll probably drink my remaining bottles within the next year or so. Not the aging potential of a classified Bordeaux, but still longer than most "experts" will claim (of course, this depends on how you like your wines; if you want a 'fruit bomb', then this is over the hill).
I highly recommend buying a moderate priced Shiraz and laying down a few bottles. Because it seems to age well, but faster than a big California Cab or French Bordeaux, you can see the effects of aging in less than a decade, plus get some pretty good wine. Just don't figure on holding it for more than 10 or so years, other than to see what can happen with a really old wine.
I will add that Australian Shiraz, more than any other wine category, seems to be a case of "you get what you pay for". In the under $10 range, which includes [yellow tail], Rosemont, Lindeman's, and a few other big names, you'll typically get very fruity, slightly sweet, simple wines. I don't recommend using these for aging, although they're cheap enough that an experiment won't set you back too much (and I'll admit, the 2002 [yellow tail] was pretty good in 2006).
ReplyDeleteOnce you get past the $10 price point, you start getting drier wines with much more complexity. Well worth the extra few bucks over the cheap stuff. And then once you pass $20, you start getting either the huge powerhouses (from Barossa), or wines with a great deal of complexity (from McLaren Vale, Heathcoat, or a few other regions). I have yet to find a Shiraz that drinks far better than its price would indicate, although I've run across a couple that do drink below.