Uber Premium Reds from the Barossa, Clare and Coonawarra

Just the fifth release of Yaldara Grand, and arguably the one which has struck a balance between power and elegance most deftly. Milk and dark chocolate, aniseed, black and blue fruits, tobacco leaf, plus plenty of cedary oak and tannin. Magical.

There’s something about the Australian Cabernet–Shiraz blend — a partnership that’s rare elsewhere in the world — that just works here.

For two decades, Matthew Jukes and Tyson Stelzer ran the annual Great Australian Wine Challenge because, as they put it, “The Cabernet Shiraz blend is Australia’s definitive wine style — its only truly unique and ageworthy flagbearer to stand confidently alongside the benchmark reds of Bordeaux, Burgundy, the Rhône, Piedmont, Tuscany and California.”

We couldn’t agree more at WD, and this Eos is a world-class expression of the style: succulent blue and purple fruits, layers of chocolate, liquorice and plum, all wrapped up in a truckload of fine, powdery tannins and cedary oak.

Rich and black, with sweet fruit balanced perfectly by savoury notes. Dark chocolate, milk chocolate and velvety goodness here. A superb follow-up to the excellent 2017 and 2021 vintages.

Old school in the best of ways according to Campbell Mattinson, who notes this wines substantial, bold and inky black fruits, coffee, dark chocolate and cream, and its slick of authoritative tannins. It is ripe and oaky, but not so much that the gorgeous fruit is prevented from shining. A gloriously engaging mouthful already which will also improve with cellaring for a decade or more.