2016 Jim Barry The Armagh Shiraz, Clare Valley

Deep, dense, dark, glass-staining red/purple colour, youthful and bold. The bouquet is extremely rich, toasty-smoky and complex, with lashings of toasty barrel overtones allied to concentrated fruit. A hint of mint. Some oyster-shell overtones. Chocolate and vanilla. The palate is silky soft and sumptuously flavoured, that tannins lavish but supple and fine-grained. 15 MAR 2020 Drink 2020–2031

Wow. This is a bold, brassy shiraz that carries a wealth of very intense aromas of ripe blackberries, dark plums, licorice and sweetly spiced earth. Still so very youthful and primary. The palate is so powerful, so mouth-filling and so, so juicy. This manages to deliver such intensity and composure. Supple, long and deep-set tannins and heroically expressive fruit. Really impressive now, but this will deliver much more over the next two decades. One of the finest releases to date