McLaren Vale, SA Best Wine Deals

Sometimes you just need a gift that is unquestionably awesome; something that leaves the recipient in absolutely no doubt as to just how much you value them. Maybe they've gone out of their way to help you this year, or they are just a good friend and you are feeling generous.!

This is that gift!

This is a full dozen gift of full tilt and fancy, award winning Shiraz from the Barossa, the McLaren Vale and the Adelaide Hills.

Yep, 3 bottles each of Yaldara's $250 a bottle, 96-point Barossa behemoth. 3 more of Showblock's 96 point, $85 a bottle McLaren Vale Shiraz, which offers superb fruit definition and is as smooth as silk. 3 of Curtis' 96-point old vine Mclaren Vale stunner, a rich, black beast that is easy to drink but offers excellent intensity of fruit. Finally, 3 bottles of the Manser Block 4, one of the best Shiraz to come out of the Adelaide Hills, year in, year out.

All up $1,500 worth of magnificent Shiraz for just $360 and because it is a dozen, there is no freight charge.

Fair chance this is the best $199 Shiraz doz we’ve ever cobbled together. Each of these is exceptional and all of these are old vine wines too, with the average vine age across the three sitting at 60!

The Curtis Small Batch might just be the best wine they have ever made – with fabulous black fruit intensity with judicious acidity and plenty of tannins driving through to an epic conclusion.

The Lone Palm, off 60-year-old Barossa Vines is packed with deep black and blue fruits, graphite, gun smoke and cedar. This is handpicked, hand plunged and basket pressed belligerence!

The Red Deer is exceptionally brightly and intensely fruited, with long black and red fruits finished with spindles of oak and fine tannins.

The 2021 vintage was exceptional across South Australia, delivering fragrant, powerful but nimble, rich, structured, and aromatically expressive reds. This premium dozen brings together outstanding Shiraz, Grenache, and Durif from McLaren Vale, Clare Valley, Barossa and Adelaide Hills offering incredible depth, power, and finesse.

What’s heading your way?

Shiraz Powerhouses: Bold and complex expressions from Dowie Dowle, Pasha, Sidewood Estate, Griffin, Lienert, Claymore and Yaldara.

The Noble Grape is a bit on the nose at the moment.

Perceived by some as being bony, hard of tannins and shy of revealing fruit, Cabernets are long way from their heyday of 20 years ago, when they outsold Shiraz. These days, the willingness to cellar, always Cabernet friend isn't really there, and 'good to go right now' wines are in ascendancy.

BUUUUUT ... we love it dearly and know that with the right fruit and the right gifted winemaker, assertively angular tannins and bony acidity make way for ethereal perfumes, generously jubey fruit and a massive smile on the head of whoever is drinking them. So here's a 'no bones' and 100% beautiful baker's doz of Cabernet for your consideration.

2 stunners from Kilikanoon lead the way and Briar Ridge's complex, Halliday 95 pointer slides in effortlessly behind. Ditto, Dandelion's 96 point Coonawarra beauty, Longview's Trophy winning stunner and Dowie Doole's tiny production, 96 point work of genius. These really are all magical- just double decant an hour or so before drinking!

Oh, the 13th bottle!?

Cab is well known for ageing beautifully, so we've scrounged around and found a small quantity of Zonte's Blackberry Patch Cab from 2017. It's drinking beautifully and we doff our Cab to it!