2023 Hentley Farm The Beauty Shiraz, Barossa Valley

The mirror image to their Beast? This stunning Barossa gem has seen Shiraz from the coolest part of the estate vineyards, co-fermented with a dash of Viognier (3%). This is all in the search for elegance and refinement. The colour here is a vibrant purple/bruised plum. The nose exhibits notes of chocolate, raspberries, cassis, cocoa powder, tobacco leaves, truffles and blackberries. This is beautifully structured and, in Barossa terms, elegance personified. There is immaculate balance, a seamless, sleek and supple texture with a fine line of acidity, silky tannins and impressive length. Youthful, but it really does possess such promise. Twelve to twenty years. Drink to 2045.

96 points Ken Gargett for Wine Pilot, May 2025

Hentley Farm's The Beauty Shiraz just seems to deliver the goods, year in, year out. Plush and pure blackberry and doris plum fruits roll from the glass with hints of fruitcake spice, blackstrap licorice, brandied fruits, vanillin oak, violets, raspberry conserve and distant suggestions of tobacco. Full bodied, with a pitch-perfect velvety flow of fruit, a cascade of fine-grained tannins and bright acidity. It is a wine that has been in fine form of late and one that makes for superb drinking in its youth and well into the future. Drink to 2045.

95 points Dave Brookes for Halliday Wine Companion, January 2026

The 2023 The Beauty Shiraz is a beautiful wine. Floral—roses, violets—deeply fruit driven and long through the finish, this is silky and powerful and elegant, all at once. One is not supposed to use "jam" or "jammy" in a positive way when discussing Barossa Shiraz—it echoes too many notes from the old days that suggest "overblown" or "overripe." Here, to say it has a raspberry-jam quality is in the best possible way: piercingly intense, red, sweet. While 2023 may have had its challenges (lots of rainfall, cool temperatures), none of those struggles are at all evident in the glass. While this wine may be "premium," at $70 AUD, it offers extraordinary value for money for its quality and impact and should not be overlooked. The fruit is grown on one of the cooler sites on the property, and there is a small portion of Viognier that is co-fermented with the Shiraz. Drink to 2038.

95 points Erin Larkin for The Wine Advocate, September 2025

Saturated purple colour; plum jam/preserved plum aromas, with a lick of brown spices and some terracotta earthiness. A hint of mint. There is a superripe sweetness of fruit deep in the core, then a rich wave of supple tannins. This is a more fragrant shiraz within this maker's portfolio. Drink to 2038.

93 points Huon Hooke for The Real Review, November 2025

The 2023 season was temperate and of long flavour accumulation, with cool nights preserving natural acidity across all varieties. The wines show ripe yet elegant flavours and charming, lifted aromatics.

The fruit for this Shiraz was estate grown in a low-elevation block in Hentley Farm’s Seppeltsfield vineyard on deep red loams facing east but shaded in the early morning.

All fruit was de-stemmed and a third fermented off skins in oak barrels, while the rest was co-fermented with a small amount of fresh Viognier skins.

About this producer

Hentley Farm was established in 1997 by Keith and Alison Hentschke in the rolling hills of Greenock Creek in the western reaches of the Barossa. Their 150-hectare property sits on a diverse range of soils that coupled with the varying orientations of the land gives them a rich tapestry of fruit styles from their two vineyard sites. Work at the winery has been led by winemaker Andrew Quin since 2008.