d'Angelo 2002 Sab's Shiraz May 05

A label I was unfamiliar with, the winery is actually located in Victoria but according to the back of the bottle it say, the grapes for this wine come from a single vineyard, they are hand-picked from low yielding 40 year old vines in Langhorne Creek. When this wine was first opened, the nose was completely dumb, to the point that I thought it was dead; however over a period of hours it opened to show all sorts of interesting nuances including earthy chocolate, boysenberry and boot polish. There are no sweet flavours on the uptake with sour cherry, plum, spice, chocolate and mocha nuances which combined to make a very interesting and different, rich brambly flavour profile. Muscular in weight, the wine is well backed with smooth powdery tannins and perfectly balanced. This is a veritable baby and will definitely improve with a few years in the cellar; rated as Highly Recommended with **** for value, I loved its unusual flavour complexity.