2016 Shaw & Smith Shiraz Adelaide Hills Australia 750 ml

We’ve tasted brilliant 97-point Shiraz before—but rarely at this price. An icon of elegance in Australia’s Adelaide Hills, Shaw + Smith’s benchmark Shiraz approached perfection for leading Australian critic James Halliday in 2016. “Everything is in its place, creating an immaculate whole—the fine-grained tannins, the length, the freshness and detail,” raved the critic in his 97-point paean. “It's polished and totally convincing.”

We were convinced—seduced, really, from the moment we got a whiff of the whole-bunch crushed berries underlaid with aromas of charred red meat. The romance continued on the palate, where succulent blackberry and cherry pulled us in toward the deeper, savory tones of peppercorn and menthol, leading to cleansing acidity on the back end. Superb!

Falling hard for this signature effort of Oz’s cool-climate winemaking, we cut a deal with Shaw + Smith with no fat on it—a genuine bargain to the bone. Join us in enjoying this absolutely masterful Shiraz ranked at the upper limits of the vintage at a one-time value price. 

Shaw + Smith was founded by a dream duo of Aussie wine authorities who happen to be cousins. Michael Hill Smith is vinicultural royalty in these parts, a fifth-generation member of the famous Yalumba dynasty, which runs the oldest family-owned winery in the country. He was also Australia’s first Master of Wine (and is a Cordon Bleu-trained chef to boot). Martin Shaw, a “third brother” in Smith’s estimation, worked closely with the visionary Brian Croser at Petaluma, which makes what some call the best Chardonnay in the country, and was a pioneer in Adelaide Hills winemaking.

Starting out in 1989, the two had originally planned to focus on Merlot, believing the Adelaide Hills too cool for Shiraz to fully ripen. But when they happened to make some for a grower they worked with, the two awoke to the incredible potential the grape had there. By 2002, they had produced their first Shiraz. Within a few years, critics and fellow winemakers were deeming it a masterpiece.

The higher altitude and the wetter your land in Adelaide, Smith tells us, the better your Shiraz. With 55 acres of vineyards that reach up to 1,640 feet and a climate in the appellation that’s considerably cooler than Barossa, freshness and acidity are a given for this release. But that alone doesn’t secure its famous elegance.

Through the past two decades, Smith and Shaw have leveraged improvement after improvement: sourcing from the best vineyards, using whole-bunch pressing and whole-berry fermentations, and relying less on oak. Today their Adelaide Hills Shiraz is “Shaw + Smith’s most consistently outstanding wine,” says Halliday. 

The results of that evolution are evident in this wildly successful release, which maintains the bottling’s reputation for balance, yet arrives with heft, braced by meaty tannins. Today, a rare chance to sample 97-point quality for a song.