Campbell Mattinson 93 points!
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Campbell Mattinson 93 points! 'Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier is my Grange, if you like it's the wine I look forward to tasting the most each year. It's also the only wine I buy every year. I opened a 2003 Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier recently and it's still a pup the riper vintages of this wine will live for a long time. Interestingly, this 2011 is the 20th release of a Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier. There's some history being built here.
The lighter colour of this 2011 is the first thing you notice. It's not pale or insipid but it's certainly not dense or black it's pinot-esque. This release also feels tangy and acidic, in the way pinot and nebbiolo often naturally do. Cloves, mulch, black and white peppers, red cherries. Star anise too. In that order. It feels and tastes like a cool-year wine, but it doesn't taste like an inferior wine. I consumed the bottle ' without help ' over a two day period and it held firm and remained pretty throughout. I don't think it's a long term wine but I don't think it's a short term one either. Cool and savoury, with ripe tannin and good length. It's an insistent wine, in the way Clonakilla Shiraz Viognier so often is. I'll be buying again.'
Campbell Mattinson, Wine Front, August 2012
'It seems only yesterday I bought the first release of the Clonakilla shiraz viognier, yet late last year the Kirk family celebrated 20 vintages of the wine. The 2011 is from the most challenging vintage winemaker Tim Kirk has encountered and yet the wine, of which less than half the normal amount was made, is a beauty. On the lighter side of medium-bodied but by no means wimpy, its chalky tannins and acidity meld with berry and plum fruits. Delicately spiced, and with neatly integrated oak, it opens up in the glass with elegance and precision.
Jane Faulkner, Good Weekend 9th March 2013.
Country:
Australia
Region:
ACT (Canberra)
Variety:
Wine Red - Shiraz
Size:
750mL
