2017 Shiraz Art Series

Glass-staining ruby. Blackberry, cherry preserve, licorice and vanilla scents on the smoke-accented nose. Primary dark fruit, mocha and vanilla flavors show very good depth and pick up a spicy nuance with air. The vanilla and cherry notes return on the long, youthfully tannic finish that features a hint of salty olive. Give this one some time, as the oak component is definitely making its case now.

Tasted from a mini sample bottle. 2017 was cooler, so this is a more medium-bodied style. Includes a bit of Malbec. Bit of whole-bunch fermentation. Larger-format barrels. Vines planted in 1975. I have to confess that I stopped listening to Tim Lovett give us all the technical details and I stopped jotting down all the answers to the intelligent questions posed by people on the Zoom tasting. This wine, at a mere £30, stopped my world. I'm not even a Shiraz lover. I taste it often, seldom drink it. But these are my unedited notes scrawled down during the Zoom tasting: 'First sniff was THE most glorious perfume. Then biltong, then pepper and cracked coriander. This is AMAZING. The sumptuousness of this fruit is remarkable. Part of you wants to sink, forever, into its opulent depths, part of you wants to soar on the storm clouds of heaven. It’s pepper, yes, but that simply doesn’t describe the spine-tingling depth and lift of this pepper. Szechuan, white, pink, green peppercorn. Lavender, laurel, touch of dried thyme. Fluid. Tastes the black satin of a stormy sky on a hot summer night, when the rocks and earth, still warm and dry from the heat of the day, are tingling in anticipation and their mineral geosmin-laden scent shimmers in the air underneath the laden fragrance of frangipani and orange leaves and there is a sickle of a moon turning an aura of the high black turmoil into something ghostly and still, and you don’t know if the sky is above you or beneath you and whether the storm and stillness are in the glass or in the sky.' I apologise if they don't make sense. It's that kind of wine. £30? It's practically a giveaway. (TC)