Jim Barry - The Armagh Shiraz 2018 (750ml)
Price: $169.00
| Producer | Jim Barry |
| Country | Australia |
| Region | Clare Valley |
| Varietal | Shiraz |
| Vintage | 2018 |
| Sku | 5075 |
| Size | 750ml |
Decanter: 100 Points
A meaty savoury spiced nose something so welcoming about it warm and friendly with a touch of perfume dark chocolate cinnamon and pink peppercorn to the blackcurrant damsons and plums. Rich ample and generous yet delivered with such supple and velvety-soft tannins. This has an elegance to it a cool sophistication in terms of the profile - neat and tidy quite linear right now brimming with energy not yet fully expansive or loose but quietly controlled and calm. It's confident though with invigorating acidity and I love the focus detail and the purity of fruit. Sweet red fruits - strawberries raspberries and red cherries with a slight balsamic pomegranate edge that is so delicious. Juicy crunchy succulent and ripe but with an effortless edge to it. Supremely drinkable and likeable - what a gorgeous wine! A quality vintage and excellent winemaking skill on show. Ageing 18 months in French oak.
James Suckling: 99 Points
This has attractive dark peaches red cherries blood oranges and really exotic fruit aromas with such an expressive nose that is swathed in fragrant spices. The palate has s
Jane Anson: 98 Points
Third year for The Armagh on the Place de Bordeaux and it's an exceptional vintage packed full of fragrant aromatics and plump seductive spiced and nuanced black cherry and damson fruit. Grilled sandalwood oak firm tannins plenty of black chocolate shavings mandarin peel the stone fruits edge of fully ripe Shiraz (almost as if it has been vinified with Viognier) tempered by sage and freshly cut rosemary herbs. This grabs you and stretches out through the palate. From a superb vineyard planted in 1968 by Jim Barry with low yields of around 27hl/h (equivalent to less than two tonnes per acre) this is exceptional with decades ahead of it. I suggest waiting a few years before opening but the tannins are polished enough that you don't have to if you are prepared to give it a good long carafe. Made by Peter and Tom Barry. Sandy-gravel soils. 75% new oak mainly 300l with a few 500l unfined and unfiltered.
dWine Advocate: 98 Points
In the context of the four vintages tasted alongside each other here the 2018 The Armagh Shiraz is the silkiest the reddest fruited and the most compact. In my opinion the best Shirazes/Syrahs in this country present (within a sensible ripening bandwidth) a complex array of both sweet and savory fruit characters not as a result of too little hang time or too much but purely as a result of the interaction between the brine the soil and the climate. This vineyard and this wine achieves that complexity. So here while the fruit has a mellifluousness and a suppleness that make it insanely attractive I would suggest waiting a little longer for this wine to gain the momentum that it surely will gain in another year or two. Equally if you want to see the pristine almost sparkling fruit on show then buy two bottles and open one tonight. It is gorgeous. This was my favorite wine here today for its silky delicate line of tannin and fruit. In perfect sync.
