2020 Clarendon Hills Shiraz Astralis
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Tasting notes
Deep in color and brooding in the glass. The modern edition of Syrah Astralis is a wonderfully complex offering that delivers powerful roasted meat, oregano, blackberry, cocoa and iron aromas with a balanced dose of new oak. Dry and fully flavored, it showcases a muscular palate rippling with coal dust, baked earth and dried spices with excellent volume and extract. Thanks to a core of youthful tannins, it tightens up for a long, linear finish. The 2020 is a great wine but clearly needs time to show its best.
Critic scores
Erin Larkin, Wine Advocate
James Suckling
More reviews and scores
Lots of dried flowers and red peppercorns with blackberries and blueberries. So perfumed and pretty. Full-bodied and reserved with tight tannins and a focused palate. Extremely long and intense. Compacted structure. Drink after 2024.
It's hard to know what more one could ask from this wine. The fruit in the 2020 Astralis Syrah shows rippling prowess—albeit a little frisky at this early stage in its life—polish and intensity that reverberates in the mouth. It has energy and thunderous poise; the tannins, fruit and acid are all completely in balance. Immune to hyperbole. This is not the big wine that everyone thinks this is. The rollout of flavor in the mouth is measured; initial, mid-palate and resonating through the long finish. It is exotic, spicy and magic. Really, really delicious. 2020 yielded half the volume of vintages 2021 and 2022 (which were virtually on par with each other).
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About the producer
Based in the McLaren Vale, Clarendon Hills has been one of the pioneering names in Australian wine. Focusing on single-site expressions of individual grapes, working with old dry-farmed vineyards, it has become one of the world’s leading producers, best known for its iconic Astralis Shiraz.