Torbreck Runrig Shiraz 2014

Torbreck is a winery on a mission to become one of the world’s great wine brands. Since 1994, they have remained committed to creating exceptional Rhone-style red and white wines that reflect the very best vineyards in Australia’s famous Barossa region. Provenance is everything to them, and they believe that the Barossa is the most exciting place to make wine in the world. With a European sense of tradition, Torbreck pays tribute to the vineyards with minimal intervention, creating wines of richness, structure and length that age gracefully. The multi-generational growers, whose descendants arrived here nearly two centuries ago, are the backbone of Torbreck’s winemaking aspirations. They work in partnership with the people of the Barossa who grow their fruit, always aiming to get the very best out of their vineyard sites. At Torbreck, they constantly seek to understand the difference between all of these special places in the Barossa and how this combination of soil, climate and farming experience is reflected in unique grape flavors. They are simply custodians, enhancing the innate expressiveness of the wines and enabling them to reveal over time their individual origins and personality. Torbreck is actually named after the forest near Inverness, Scotland where the winery’s founder, David Powell worked as a lumberjack after completing university studies. The winemaking style at Torbreck is meticulous and dedicated to producing exceptional wines. They use carefully selected 225-litre oak barriques for maturation, known as Dominique Laurent ‘Magic Casks’. The oak is personally harvested from Forêt de Tronçais in Allier, and the staves are aged for 48 to 54 months at an exposed location for maximum seasoning. The staves are then hand-made into barrels and heated over three differing flames for several hours, resulting in a gentle toast due to the remarkable density of the wood. Torbreck’s winemaking style reflects their commitment to producing exceptional wines that reflect the unique terroir of the Barossa region. The Torbreck RunRig Shiraz is a wine that pays homage to the Highland clans “RunRig” system of communal land distribution. This system emphasized the communal element of the whole rather than any one farm, and the RunRig Shiraz embodies this philosophy by blending Shiraz from old dry-grown vineyards with Viognier to complement the strengths and complexities of each individual parcel of fruit, giving the wine a further dimension. The resulting wine has often drawn comparisons with the beautifully fragrant and tautly structured wines produced from the steep slopes of the Northern Rhône Valley’s Appellation of Côte Rôtie. With this wine, Torbreck has created a true masterpiece that embodies the spirit of community and the beauty of the land. The Torbreck Runrig Shiraz 2014 is a silky and fragrant wine that rewards those with patience. The vintage was challenged by spring frosts in 2013 and a hot dry summer in 2014, followed by rain in early February that delayed the harvest. However, the resulting cooler period in mid-February benefited the vintage with a longer ripening season, producing relatively low yielding fruit of good concentration and depth. Upon opening, intense, lifted aromatics of dense cherry plum and dark chocolate come to the fore with an opulent fruit profile of mulberry and five-spice. The palate is silky textured with deep red cherry fruits, clove and liquorice all interwoven with hints of sweet spice and cinnamon. The layers and diverse fruit characters continue to evolve in the glass with hints of ironstone, anise, blackberry and pepper becoming more persistent in the finish. The wine is a blend of 98.5% Shiraz and 1.5% Viognier sourced from six different vineyards. It spent 30 months on new, second fill and third fill French oak barriques, completing a natural malolactic fermentation in the barrel and resting on fine lees throughout maturation to enhance texture. The wine has crimson and deep purple hues with savoury tones and firm tannins that interplay with a generous, silky, textural mid-palate weight. The finish is firm and persistent, making this wine a great candidate for cellaring for 15 to 20 years. Deep garnet-purple coloured, the 2014 Run Rig opens with a bang, delivering intense fruits of the forest and blackberry preserve notes with hints of sandalwood, cardamom, dried Provence herbs, Indian spices and garrigue. Full-bodied, rich, concentrated and oh, so satisfying, the beauty ticks all the great Barossa Shiraz boxes and then some. It is still relatively primary, so I’d recommend giving it another 2-3 years at least in bottle and drink it over the next 20+.- Lisa Perrotti-Brown MW, Wine Advocate (September 2017), 97+ Points. Intense, lifted aromatics of dense cherry plum and dark chocolate all come to