2019 Descendant
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Tasting notes
Terrific intensity and depth with blackberry, blueberry, black ink, graphite and umami. Pencil shavings. Full and very fine with depth and richness. Co-fermented with 8% viogner. This is a wine that seduces you with its aromas and complexity. You just want to smell it. Give it three to four years to open. Try after 2025.
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James Suckling
Erin Larkin, Wine Advocate
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2019 followed the warm (but excellent) 2018 in the Barossa, and was marred by low yields and very concentrated fruit. 2020 was another step further down that low-yielding, dry track, completing a trio of concentrated, brooding vintages that are, as the years go by, harder and harder to get ahold of. So, the 2019 Descendant includes Viognier skins in the ferment, usually around 2%, and the fruit is sourced from vines planted from cuttings from the RunRig Vineyard. A baby Runrig, if you will. So, this is silky, slippery, tannic and intense, with layers of vibrant raspberry, jasmine tea, red licorice, jelly snakes and deli meat. As usual for the Torbreck reds, the texture of the wine is velvety, plush, intense and enveloping. This ages very well, we know it does, but if you must drink it early, decant it!