Shiraz

This bold and beautiful McLaren Vale Shiraz puts the region's best foot forward - and the grape's most vibrant, peppery flavours forward too, in the glass. It's named after winery owner Frank Mitolo's three children, Gemma, Alex and Marco and is a deliciouly dark and spicy red with deep earthy notes. 

The wine is made from vineyards at the south end of McLaren Vale, which provides ripe but balanced dark flavours of powerful black cherries, black plums and strong notes of cinnamon, nutmeg and spice. Winemaker Ben Glaetzer says he picks grapes on flavour ripeness to make wines with mature tannins and vibrant fruit both being key characteristics of Mitolo wines. 

He describes GAM Shiraz as opulent, robust and multi layered; an ideal match for rustic foods.

It comes from the Lopresti vineyard, which is about three kilometres east of the coastal town of Port Willunga.

Winemaker Ben Glaetzer describes this wine as: "Full bodied and dense, the palate provides layers of ripe black fruits that open up endlessly. Firm, ripe tannins amply support the rich and opulent black fruit characters with the earthy background notes contributing further complexity. It is an ample and very classic expression of McLaren Vale Shiraz."

Savitar is one of the great Shirazes from McLaren Vale, made with grapes grown on the Lopresti Vineyard's Chinese Block, located at the south end of McLaren Vale, about four kilometres east of the coastal town of Port Willunga. The vines struggle here, producing low yields of fruit with tiny berries which are full of black fruit flavours with dried herb, black olives and an earthy structure of dark smokiness, making this a power packed wine. 

It's named after a mythological dragon like creature, in homage to this wine's bold flavours and powerful length. It's an impressive wine for now and will undoubtedly age for the long haul - think a decade at least. 

The winemaking

Grapes for Savitar Shiraz are selected by hand from the Lopresti Vineyard in McLaren Vale, a site where they struggle and deliver in small volumes. This is regarded as outstanding raw material. They are fermented and the wine pressed before being transferred to oak barrels where it remains on light lees for 18 months before blending. 

Imagine a velvet smooth red with a full body and a light touch with a silky palate. Here it is in Ochota Barrels Syrah. Flavours of black olive and fresh earth meet ripe red plums in this wine, made from grapes grown on the Onkaparinga Hills vineyard, planted on schist and clay in 1996. 

Certified organic and dry grown grapes were given whole bunch wild yeast fermentation with 80% short gentle macerations and hand plunging along with 20% extended carbonic maceration. The wine was pressed straight to seasoned French oak for 94 days. It was bottled unfined and unfiltered.

We have small volumes of Ochota Barrels wines in store at Regional. Get in quick.

Meet Ox Hardy Shiraz; an elegant spicy and ripe black plummy wine with beautiful structure, which is made with grapes grown in Blewitt Springs in McLaren Vale, south of Adelaide, where sea breezes cool down the vines. Following harvest, the fruit was destemmed and crushed into fermenters with inoculated yeasts and gentle extraction of colour, tannin and flavour. The wine was drained off and the skins bag-pressed before being transferred to French Oak second fill barriques and three new hogsheads. It aged for 18 months in oak before being bottled with minimal filtration.

Ox Hardy is the brainchild of founder Andrew Hardy, whose nickname is Ox and whose great great grandfather was Thomas Hardy; the father of the South Australian wine industry.

Grange is Australia’s most collectible wine on the auction market and is listed as a Heritage Icon of South Australia. It was first created in the 1950s by the late Max Schubert, winemaker at Penfolds, whose aim was to create a Shiraz to end all Shirazes. His wine was controversial when first tasted with others at the winery but has since grown to become a liquid expression of South Australia's hot climate, its most planted grape variety and winemaking with all the bells and whistles. It's always youthful when first bottled and can age for decades, in the correct cellaring conditions. 

"Rich, concentrated and intense, the 2014 Grange delivers exactly what we've come to expect from this Penfolds icon wine. It's full-bodied, velvety in feel and loaded with plummy fruit, framed in vanilla and cedar. Dense, powerful and tannic, it should prove to be long lived, even by Grange standards. Gago doesn't rate the vintage overall that highly, but he says the selection this year for Grange was a bit more stringent and that production levels were just average."

Rating 98+/100 Joe Czerwinski

Drinking date from 2025 to 2050

Grange is Australia?s most collectible wine on the auction market and is listed as a Heritage Icon of South Australia. It was first created in the 1950s by the late Max Schubert, winemaker at Penfolds, whose aim was to create a Shiraz to end all Shirazes. His wine was controversial when first tasted with others at the winery but has since grown to become a liquid expression of South Australia's hot climate, its most planted grape variety and winemaking with all the bells and whistles. It's always youthful when first bottled and can age for decades, in the correct cellaring conditions.

"The nose of the 2015 Grange features the wine's characteristic lifted aromas, joined by pronounced American oak influence and bold blackberry fruit, plus hints of red meat, raspberries, asphalt and vanilla. It's dense and concentrated, full bodied, balanced and firm, with a rich, velvety texture and long, plush finish. Don't expect great complexity at this youthful stage, with its primary fruit and oak elements. This Grange should easily last for three to four decades."

Rating 98+/100 Joe Czerwinski

Drinking date from 2025 to 2050 

Grange is Australia's most collectible wine on the auction market and is listed as a Heritage Icon of South Australia. It was first created in the 1950s by the late Max Schubert, winemaker at Penfolds, whose aim was to create a Shiraz to end all Shirazes. His wine was controversial when first tasted with others at the winery but has since grown to become a liquid expression of South Australia's hot climate, its most planted grape variety and winemaking with all the bells and whistles. It's always youthful when first bottled and can age for decades, in the correct cellaring conditions. 

"Strongly marked, as always, by its 100% American oak elevage, the 2017 Grange backs up cedar and vanilla notes with ample blackberry and cassis fruit. Full bodied, ripe and decadently creamy, it's loaded with substance, concentration and rich, but, in the context of Grange, a relatively light and elegant finish. Only the seventh ever Grange to be exclusively Shiraz, it originates from Barossa Valley (86%) and McLaren Vale (14%); Shiraz from other growing regions in South Australia failed to make the grade this year."

Rating 96/100 Joe Czerwinski

Drinking date from 2023 to 2040

Legend of Aussie wine, Peter Lehmann made his fame and fortune from spicy deep rich Shiraz, such as this sensational full bodied example, which is now seven years old and drinking like a dream.

A classically styled shiraz from the Barossa Valley - rich, smooth and powerful. The glass bursts with warming aromas and flavours of plums, boysenberries and dark chocolate. Taught acidity provides freshness and fine powdery tannins provide structure . American, French, Russian and Hungarian oak hogsheads were used for an eighteen month maturation, providing hints of cedar and spice. This wine really delivers for the price point!

Knife Edge Shiraz puts a deliciously dry, savoury, earthy foot forward for Australia's most planted grape variety. It's full bodied and beautifully powerful with ripe plum and juicy dark berry flavours, made with grapes grown on the Best?s Sugarloaf Creek Vineyard in the Great Western in the Grampians in Victoria. 

Notes of white pepper, olive, sage, tart blue fruits and smoked meats make up this wine?s flavour profile. It's a stunner from winemaker Alexia Reed. 

Produced with selected small parcels of old, dry grown Barossa Shiraz from nearly 30 of the Barossa?s finest grape growing families. The vineyards are situated in different sub regions throughout the Barossa, which adds to the complexity and depth of flavours. The wine is hand made using equipment from the turn of the last century, then aged in American and French oak for two years. All this contributes to the objective to make the very highest quality, traditional, soft, deep coloured, earthy Australian red wine which will bottle age.

Rockford Shiraz Cabernet is one of the icons of Australia and of the Barossa Valley with its bold deep ruby colour and powerful tannins adding layers of complex texture and taste to a wine that drinks well now with dark berry flavours and will evolve into a wine with smoothness, spicy notes and black olive depths over time in the bottle.

Rockford Wines' legacy

Rockford Wines is an icon itself and a relatively new one, established in 1971 by Robert O'Callaghan, who has forged a reputation for preserving winemaking tradition and saving many of the world's oldest grape vines from being pulled up in the Australian Government's vine pull schemes of the 1970s and 1980s.

The Rockford vintage shed houses equipment from 50 to 100 years ago, which was discarded by other wineries as modernisation took over. 

The sun baked earth of McLaren Vale provides a layered geology ideal for complex yet balanced wines laced with power and elegance. This Shiraz continues with that ideal, leading with blackberry, blackcurrant pastille and faint wisps of molasses, carried subtly by gentle tannins ? long and wide across the palate ? while roast beetroot and sarsaparilla tonic tantalise the olfactory.

Will age well for 10 years and more. 

A fantastic value wine made by John Quarisa of Johhny Q wines. 

This is rich and savoury and certainly punches above its weight for the price. Deep red with hints of purple in the glass, the nose is fresh yet decadent, with notes of black cherry, blackberry, chocolate and spice. The palate offers warm spice and ripe berry flavours, complemented by smoke, spice and coffee notes. The finish is soft and smooth

Petite Sirah is a cross of Peloursin and Syrah and also goes by the name of Duriff.