2008 Greenock Creek Roennfeldt Road Shiraz
Philip White 96+++ points
"A really brave example of what very new American oak can do when it dances with the one who brung it, this wine is probably even more otherly abled than the Cabernet. It's not quite as compressed as its brother, mind you, and does fall on the side of being quite a lot more wine-like. But like the Cabernet, it really does need several decades. After four days of air, it only began to show signs of having breathed oxygen. Even now, on day six, its fruit is snoring way down below that Quercus alba resin like a great beast that few would be stupid enough to wake. It's a black critter with hair shaggier than a South Island boar...It smells like Worcestershire Sauce, very old soy sauce, and eighty-year old balsamic. You cannot smell grapes. You may rightly allege I'm speaking of it with the same sanctimonious ridicule Max Schubert's detractors did when they tried to scuttle his Grange. SO why confess? Because having tasted those wines of Max's at maturity, I know that in the case of honest wine grown and made by the right determined people, with absolute faith in their source and their capacity to let it run its own life, nearly every critic, like me, can be wrong."
Philip White 96+++ points
"A really brave example of what very new American oak can do when it dances with the one who brung it, this wine is probably even more otherly abled than the Cabernet. It's not quite as compressed as its brother, mind you, and does fall on the side of being quite a lot more wine-like. But like the Cabernet, it really does need several decades. After four days of air, it only began to show signs of having breathed oxygen. Even now, on day six, its fruit is snoring way down below that Quercus alba resin like a great beast that few would be stupid enough to wake. It's a black critter with hair shaggier than a South Island boar...It smells like Worcestershire Sauce, very old soy sauce, and eighty-year old balsamic. You cannot smell grapes. You may rightly allege I'm speaking of it with the same sanctimonious ridicule Max Schubert's detractors did when they tried to scuttle his Grange. SO why confess? Because having tasted those wines of Max's at maturity, I know that in the case of honest wine grown and made by the right determined people, with absolute faith in their source and their capacity to let it run its own life, nearly every critic, like me, can be wrong."
Philip White 96+++ points
"A really brave example of what very new American oak can do when it dances with the one who brung it, this wine is probably even more otherly abled than the Cabernet. It's not quite as compressed as its brother, mind you, and does fall on the side of being quite a lot more wine-like. But like the Cabernet, it really does need several decades. After four days of air, it only began to show signs of having breathed oxygen. Even now, on day six, its fruit is snoring way down below that Quercus alba resin like a great beast that few would be stupid enough to wake. It's a black critter with hair shaggier than a South Island boar...It smells like Worcestershire Sauce, very old soy sauce, and eighty-year old balsamic. You cannot smell grapes. You may rightly allege I'm speaking of it with the same sanctimonious ridicule Max Schubert's detractors did when they tried to scuttle his Grange. SO why confess? Because having tasted those wines of Max's at maturity, I know that in the case of honest wine grown and made by the right determined people, with absolute faith in their source and their capacity to let it run its own life, nearly every critic, like me, can be wrong."
