2022 Yangarra Ironheart Shiraz, McLaren Vale

Deep, bright purple colour leads into a slightly subdued but rich nose of dark and red fruits, blackberry uppermost, with charcoal, mixed spice and sweet floral high-notes. The wine is tremendously deep and concentrated on the palate but at the same time elegant and spritely. There are flecks of dark chocolate and bitumen, too. The wine is long and the tannins supple and fine, resulting in a remarkably more-ish finish—it drinks so well now, yet the wine is destined for a long future. Drink to 2045.

97 points Huon Hooke For The Real Review, May 2025

'22 was a cool year that produced some reticent but excellent grenache, while shiraz seemed to sail through untroubled. This is an infant, of course, but there’s a ready appeal not always seen at this stage, a meshing of red, blue and black fruits – ripe raspberry, blackberry, blueberry, tart boysenberry, red plum, black olive – with an overlay of baking spices, iodine, coffee grounds and beef bouillon. And iron, yes. It’s on the label. In the ground. In the wine. Here, the wine benefits from that soil transfer being elegant, filigreed, not rugged. It needs a little time to be its best, but it’s a superb release. Drink to 2038.

97 points Marcus Ellis for Halliday Wine Companion, May 2025

The 2022 release of Yangarra’s top Shiraz states its position and makes you listen to it. A brooding iodine and, dare I say, ‘iron-like’ minerality sits deep and restrained first off before an unfurling of charred herbs, woodsmoke, nutmeg, cassia bark and a glimmer of menthol. Black cherry, blackberry pastille and damson plum make an appearance following some aeration, alongside earth, gentle mocha, clove and dark chocolate. This has a dramatic sensibility – it’s deep and dark with excellent restraint and control. The palate runs a dichotomy of a cooling, ferrous mineral feel alongside dark, febrile power. It strides through the mouth with unabated assurance and lashings of dark cherry, mocha, earth, dark chocolate, blackberry, cassia and dried herbs. The tannins are vertical, stacked and grainy providing a funnel for the complex power to coil within. There’s seemingly endless length to this wine. It’s powerful and of course youthful, but any risk of heftiness is cut up and lifted by mineral detail and pulled into focus and precision by architectural structure. All of this paired with kaleidoscopic complexity makes for a wine of incontrovertible brilliance.

96 points Tom Kline for Wine Pilot, June 2025

The colour is deep and bright. Intense and concentrated aromas of dark plum and blackberry augmented with a slightly savoury dried herb influence topped by a little fruit cake richness. A powerful and concentrated palate that delivers with typical finesse that comes from the mix of larger format oaks and just a small amount of light pressings. A most attractive wine. Drink to 2045.

96 points Ray Jordan for Wine Pilot, May 2025

Deep ruby with a hint of purple in the light. Blood plum, lavender bush, nori and blackberry pastille aromatics. Deep and powerful, dense black and blue fruits fill the senses, equally balanced by anise, blood, nori and black pepper spices. It builds and builds to a crescendo of flavour intensity, but remains unwavering and driven by powerful fine gravelly tannins. The length is prodigious, carrying the harmony long and lingering, eventually fading with a drying flourish. Drink to 2043.

96 points Stuart Knox for The Real Review, February 2025

Floral and perfumed with an underlying power, showing notes of mulberries, wild blackberries, Damson plums and cured meat. The palate is full-bodied with seamless tannins and bright acidity, giving robust notes of dark cherries, iodine, mocha, violets and ferric earth. Well balanced and structured. Very serious. Drink or hold.

96 points James Suckling, October 2024

Grown on ironstone gravel soils, the fruit sees open fermenters and 21 days on skins before maturation in French and Austrian oak for 19 months. A shrub of black cherries, wild hawthorn, and mulberries meets olive flecks, woodsy herbs, and crushed black peppercorns. There’s a sliver of purple flowers and dots of pen ink. The palate is buoyant, lifted by lively acidity, which gives way to well-integrated oak and whole-bunch tannins. This sits in the sweet spot of a Venn diagram—moderate-climate Shiraz with Syrah-like spice and herbal lift. It’s drinking beautifully now, but it’s been crafted with a long view, promising further reward over the next 5–8 years. A glass or two alongside the chew and game of lamb cutlets would be just the thing. Drink to 2033.

95 points Shanteh Wale for Wine Pilot, October 2025

The 2022 Ironheart Shiraz leads with sumac and soaked raspberries, creamy dark berries, exotic spice and tapenade. The oak makes an impact on the nose: it contributes an oatmeal character, reminiscent of malt biscuits and scraped vanilla bean. Nothing on this earth is getting in the way of or obscuring that saturated fruit concentration, however. Fine, silty tannins like volcanic sand shape the flow of flavor across the palate, and all elements feel eminently black and shadowy. It's tannic, which reflects the vintage, structural and inky. It's a powerhouse. It matured in a combination of French and Austrian oak for 19 months—for 12 months, the fruit remains on lees in puncheon (35% new), and the remaining seven months are spent as a blended whole in a two-year-old 25-hectoliter foudre. Drink to 2042.

95 points Erin Larkin for The Wine Advocate, May 2025

Yangarra is a certified organic and biodynamic vineyard in Blewitt Springs, at the northern edge of the McLaren Vale wine region of South Australia. The fruit for this flagship wine comes from a north facing section planted in 1999 on ironstone gravels over the regional Maslin sands.

The handpicked grapes were mostly destemmed, with the ferment including a small portion of whole bunches. Fermentation took place in open vats with indigenous yeasts. No pressings were used for this wine, and it matured first in French oak puncheons on lees, before a further maturation in a combination of seasoned Austrian and French oak foudre.