Top 100 Wines of 2018 & Special Value Wine

A co-fermented 94/6% blend. The hue is good, although not deep - pinotish. Tim Kirk nails it when he writes of a line of pure spice running through the bouquet and palate - I would simply add 'and the aftertaste' because this has superb length and texture, replete with red berry flavours. Clonakilla at its best. Drink by 2037.

Top 100 Wines of the World 2018 & Top 100 Wines of Australia 2018

One of the greatest vintages of this wine. It has a super complex array of white and black peppers, hard brown spices, leaves, flowers and fresh wet earth, as well as graphite-like dark stony notes. The palate is immaculately detailed, long and silky with flavors of blackberries, red cherries, red plums, dark cherries, blackberries and dark chocolate. The palate is delivered with steady elegance and power, showing unwavering build and a seemingly never-ending trail of fresh and spicy fruit flavors. With the most immaculate tannins, too. The real soul of this wine shines through in this perfectly simpatico vintage. Fascinating to drink now, but it is best to give it some time. Try around 2025.

Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier. Australian Grand Cru Shiraz. It has both lightness and power; it has wooden racks of spice set into deep cupboards of black cherry; it has anise; it has forest berries, it has florals and it has meat, though all of it sits in the one, neat, tidy room. Tannin is so fine and so bright with spice that it sits like gold thread in an evening gown. It’s a wine of shadows and a wine of light; of shadow and of joy. Pour a glass and behold its beauty, for it is rich in that. Drink: 2019-2034+

A gloriously fragrant and elegant Clonakilla is the blessing of a classic cool year, brimming with rose petal and pot pourri. A delightful core of morello cherry and wild strawberry fruit glides seamlessly through a lingering trail of powder-fine tannins. It's set to go down as a long-lived Clonakilla.