Riverina Estate 2001 1164 Shiraz May 05

 

The wine is available from Get Wines Direct  for $16.95 instead of the reported list price of $35. The bouquet is dominated by coffee oak, spice and plum. The wine is a medium in weight and has good intensity of flavour; it also lingers nicely and has a pleasant mouth feel. After a couple of mouthfuls, the smooth oak-derived tannins (which have a minor green edge) build on the palate and become chewie, slightly overshadowing the fruit. The flavour spectrum is totally black and savoury; very ripe stewed blackberry, black pepper and black coffee. I doubt it will get much better. Rated as Recommended, it's ready to drink now.

 

The bottle proudly boasts a gold medal at the China wine show and another at the Visy Board Great Australian Shiraz Challenge 2002. I can understand how it won the former medal, but not the latter. For the record, according to the website, it actually won the Gold Medal in 2004, but how it did that is beyond my understanding. At $16.95 it gets *** for value. At $35 it would be *. It was interesting to note the cork had very little staining on it which could mean one of a number of things so I did some checking. The wine was matured in new oak for 24 months; assuming it was made in February of 2001, it should have been ready to go into bottle in February 2003. If I'm reading the date code on the bottle correctly, it was bottled in December 2004. I wonder how many batches of the wine of have been made and bottled.