2023 Obscura Shiraz

Awards

97ptsSam Kim, Wine Orbit 2025

95pts Ray Jordan, Wine Pilot 2025

The colour is immediately striking. It’s almost opaque with a reddy black hue. This is a wine that’s been built for extended cellaring. It’s sourced from McLaren Vale in a season that produced some very tidy shiraz. After fermentation, it spent thirty months in a mixture of French and American oak hogsheads, of which about seventy percent was new. And yes, there is some oak there, but boy, there’s so much fruit weight and intensity. It’s hugely concentrated with dark plummy spicy fruits, dark chocolate, a little liqueur, and some sweet vanilla notes. It’s a bold statement of McLaren Vale shiraz, and yet it possesses a degree of subtle humility that controls it as it extends through to its long finish. Certainly handles some extended cellaring.
Cellar: 20 years

94pts Tony Love, Wine Pilot 2025

A wide-shouldered McLaren Vale Shiraz with a deep top dressing of oak – in this case soaked in 30 months of 70% new French and American hogshead barrels. Know this before you approach and you won’t be taken by surprise at the hugely timbered bouquet, which to its credit allows a modicum of rich and sweet, plum-jammy Shiraz to show its colours as well, both at first and more so in the palate, which is held tightly in the finish by well defined, barrel-derived tannins. Nothing shy about this Shiraz – it’s all big country bravado and ten gallon hats.

Name

The absolute darkness of the winery barrel shed is where the true magic of a good wine takes place. Quiet, still, dark and peaceful the ‘Obscura’.  A place for the wine to mature, a place of secrecy and place where the winemaker can have a true uninterrupted place for creativity.

Vineyard

This vineyard develops sensation fruit quality and an intensity rarely matched. We believe strongly that McLaren Vale Shiraz is a serious contender as a region that produces some of the World’s Best, and this fruit is certainly some insight into just that. The 2023 vintage delivered a respectable crop size and exemplary quality in Shiraz blocks. With near perfect ripening conditions with mild temperatures and cool nights the vines thrived.

Winery
With wine people often talk about balance. When you have a parcel of fruit with great intensity the challenge is always to give the fruit and in turn the wine the other elements its needs to thrive, but then there is always the economic and logistical push/ pull of operating a winery. We knew from the vineyard this fruit for the Obscura Shiraz needed time and in order to get the best wine we were going to have to be patience. As always open fermenters are the obvious choice for fruit of this quality. Why? There’s a few reasons. The ‘volume to surface’ ratio for good extraction is perfect and offers the best control for the winemaker, we also have great control of temperature and can avoid that ‘hot red centre’ in the ferment that causes over extraction. Then, there is the extraction method we use, be it plunging, pump overs or a combination of both, this will heavily determined the outcome of the style. For this wine a 3-day cold soak (10 degrees) prior to a slow, cool (18 degree) 8 day fermentations was used. A little wild yeast initially, then inoculated where we let the ferment run a little warmer towards the end to really maximise the potential of this fruit.

Very tight grain French & American Hogsheads barrels for 30 months.

Winemaker:
Campbell Greer

Vintage:
2023

Variety:
Shiraz 100%

Maturation:
30 Months in French & American Oak Hogsheads, 70% new oak.

Region:
McLaren Vale 100%

Alcohol:
15.0%

Colour: Deep intense dark, almost black.

Nose: All the hallmarks of McLaren Vale Shiraz signal a stunning wine as the deep dark berry collides with liquorice and 90% cocoa.

Palate: Devine! Texturally smooth, seamlessly interwoven and a length of flavour built on the foundations of a perfectly weighted oak integration. We have done our bit, now you have to do yours. GET IT IN THE DECANTER, MINIMUM 2 HOURS!

Potential: 10+ years.