2023 Omertà Shiraz

Awards

98pts Sam Kim,Wine Orbit 2025

Immensely complex and enticing, the wine is packed with blackberry, violet, vanillin oak, warm spice, and smoked game characters with a light dusting of dark cocoa on the nose. The gorgeously refined palate delivers outstanding depth and a velvety mouthfeel, beautifully framed by well-integrated tannins, resulting in a firmly structured wine with plush texture and an impressively long, gratifying finish. At its best: now to 2043.

Name

The Omertà is a Mafia code of silence and a refusal to give evidence. We apply the same code of silence to the fruit parcel that makes this wine.

Vineyard

What we will tell you is it’s very, very good, highly sought after and 100% McLaren Vale. 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
In the winery it’s always exciting to welcome the Omertà Shiraz fruit with its intriguing mystical, power meets elegance. In open ferments the fruit has a 4-day cold soak (10 degrees) prior to slow, cool (18 degree) fermentation for gentle extraction of colour flavour, and tannin into the wine.

Batches were kept separate and 3 different yeasts strains were used including one wild yeast batch to create complexity and texture. Following fermentation, the wine was then matured in the finest predominately new (48 month seasoned), very tight grain French oak Hogsheads. This oak seasoning process is when the oak post harvesting and milling into planks sits in the elements on large racks where it allows the oak to leach out the raw tannins prior to coopering into barrels. Typical oak seasoning is for 12-24 months, so a 48 month program is a very long seasoning process. The results speaks for themselves in the wine and when combined with the wine maturation of 34 months there’s a complexity and mouthfeel that is unmatched.

Winemaker:
Campbell Greer

Vintage:
2023

Variety:
Shiraz 100%

Maturation:
34 Months in French Oak Hogsheads, 80% new oak.

Region:
McLaren Vale 100%

Alcohol:
15.0%

Colour: Deep intense dark, almost black.

Nose: Blackberry intensity, swaths of savoury cured meats tell a delightful story. The extended oak maturation regime is obvious as the complexity plays with the senses and shows something intriguing after each and every swirl.

Palate: A symphony of impeccable fruit meeting unmatched French oak set the foundation. Combined with patience this has allowed this wine to establish a stunning flow from fruit to oak. A harmony rarely seen in Australian wine due to the combined extended oak seasoning regime and the 34 month maturation to delivery an exceptional wine. Your undivided attention is needed here as the complexity deepens with each sip. We have done our bit, now you have to do yours. GET IT IN THE DECANTER, MINIMUM 2 HOURS!

Potential: 10+ years.