2022 Levantine Hill Estate Syrah, Yarra Valley

Full ruby red colour. Blood plum, nori and brisket aromas. Full and weighty but balanced on a taut line of tannins and a fine mesh of acidity. Savoury drive leads, with smoky meats, wakame and dried blood notes, underpinned by dried blueberry richness. Prodigious length, gliding with seamless elegance that belies its intensity. Distinctly syrah rather than shiraz in style. Drink to 2039.

95 points Stuart Knox for The Real Review, December 2025

The 2022 Levantine Hill Estate Syrah is a blend of the PT23 and Entav-Inra-470 clones, with fruit handpicked across sixteen parcels in the Maroondah Highway vineyard over three days from the 9th to the 15th of March.

Each parcel was vinified separately, and the fruit hand sorted at the winery before it was destemmed, or crushed, to small open vats, with stalks added back to select parcels for complexity. The ferments started with a mix of indigenous and cultivated yeasts, with ferments lasting from one to three weeks hand plunged a maximum of once per day for gentle extraction and integration of tannins.

The pressed wine was matured for nineteen months in a combination of brand-new French oak hogsheads and well-seasoned puncheons, as well as single 3,500L foudre. The final blend includes a small 1% component of Marsanne and was bottled at the end of November 2023 with a small addition of sulphur dioxide.

About this producer

Levantine Hill was established in 2009 by the Jreissati family who remain its current owners. Based in the Coldstream subregion of Yarra Valley, their holdings encompass two vineyard sites, the lower Maroondah Highway site planted between 1995 and 2016, and the steep Hill Road site planted from 2009 to 2015.

Chief winemaker Paul Bridgeman is a well-regarded Yarra local who managed Yarra Yering following the passing of Dr. Bailey Carrodus. He has been guiding Levantine Hill’s wines since 2013 and today works closely with winemaker Peter Shore.