Always a McLaren Vale strength, the region’s shiraz can either be fruit forward and generous, all but jumping into your lap, or a little more circumspect. This wine falls into the latter category. You can almost feel it growing, its budding complexity going through the stages. So much so, that this wine was tasting even better the second day after opening. There’s a lesson there. Consider some ageing as well as early drinking. Deep in colour and scent with heady aromas of black fruits, dark chocolate, toasted spices, and dried herbs. Note the focused tannins on the palate. They’re counting time on this dense, lightly savoury shiraz with its deep undertow of heady spice. Aided by fine tannins and balanced oak, the wine sings but it’s just warming up.

The colour is fabulous, the hue of the mulberries, picked straight off the tree, that stained my lips in the summers of childhood. Violets and liquorice, blueberry syrup. So enticing you want to dive in. The sweet baking spices that greet you when arriving at the house of a dear friend who just happens to have cookies in the oven.

Bright and juicy on the palate, with lashings of black fruit and star anise. A little time reveals earthy, savoury charcoal, vanilla-scented blackberry pie and dark chocolate shavings. Full bodied and rich with silky smooth tannins offering enough structure to promise graceful ageing. Drink with smoked beef short ribs cooked long and slow, sweet and spicy barbecue sauce, and fennel scented coleslaw.

Put aside the fascination and the success which Corrina and her team have had with all manner of varieties, new, quirky and wonderfully weird, it is Shiraz that is the bread and butter of their estate (as well as their own wines, they are also highly regarded growers for many of our big names). We are talking about a winery in the very heart of McLaren Vale, so it certainly should be. This is a perfect example of what they are capable of – a cracking, deeply flavoured Shiraz. The wine was open-fermented and then aged in a mix of French and American hogsheads for 18 months.

The colour is near opaque. Lifted, alluring and yet dense aromas here – black olives, roast meats, cocoa powder, black cherries, chocolate, campfire notes. There is good intensity throughout, continuing on the lengthy finish. Good acidity, immaculate balance and silky tannins, the oak holds it all together but never interferes. A wine of line and length. A big future here. This is a serious Shiraz and a very fine example of what McLaren Vale can do. Also, great value.

And the story? This was the year in which ‘Corrina won ASVO Winemaker of the Year’. Now that is a good story.

‘Dark chocolate and black plums, powerful aromatics - a mix of new and old oak. A measured dose of sweetness hits the front palate - savoury, coffee-bean complexity follows. Compelling shiraz. Speaks of region.’

‘One of those reliable drops you can easily turn to when the bottle shop shelves become a blur. It’s a dense wine with a good whack of cedary oak. Think dark plums and berries, dark chocolate plus licorice all adding interest. Faint dashes of soy and baking spices come late with attractive fine spices clutching long. The depth of fruit fills the palate with ease calling you back with its moreish appeal.’

From 8-10yo estate blocks, open-fermented, matured in French and American hogsheads for 18 months. Dense, impenetrable purple; a full-bodied shiraz with dark chocolate/licorice/stewed plum flavours, fine-grained tannins and good length. Has its whole life in front of it.