2019 Yering Station Shiraz-Viognier Yarra Valley Victoria Australia 750 ml

Like its peers Rockford, Wendouree, and Mount Langi Ghiran—some of Australia’s greatest wineries—Yering Station is near-impossible to find in the United States.

Historic and beloved in Australia, their wines rarely ever make it off the dock on the Tasman Sea. Home to the first vines ever planted in Victoria, Yering Station has received the Halliday Wine Companion’s Top 5-Red Star winery rating in each of the last 10 years—a rarefied category Halliday calls “truly the best of the best.” 

The 2019 Yering Station Shiraz-Viognier Yarra Valley, a 95-point beauty that Halliday Wine Companion called “silky and textured” and “fleshy and satisfying,” comes from the valley floor of the appellation’s gently rolling landscape. Striking the perfect balance between muscularity and grace, it’s one that can hang with the best of the Northern Rhône or California. 

Yarra is famed for having mild weather, but its huge array of elevations and exposures gives it a diverse range of microclimates. Since Shiraz loves heat, Yarra’s most exquisite bottlings come from warmer, lower-elevation sites, where the vines are sheltered from the biting winds that batter the hillsides.

Victoria is one of Australia’s most acclaimed wine regions, and Yering Station has been there longer than anyone else. The winery, which bears a five-star rating from the Wine Companion, dates back to 1838, when two Scottish brothers planted Yarra’s first-ever vineyard. As the region garnered worldwide fame, Yering Station remained one of its top estates. 

For this bottling, winemaker Willy Lunn co-fermented the Shiraz with 2% Viognier rather than vinifying the grapes separately. This process—common in France’s Northern Rhône region, the cradle of Syrah—allows the two varieties to meld into one gorgeous, seamlessly integrated whole.