that fit comfortably within the modern, lightweight red style, and made for delicious early drinking. The Kalleske Wines Parallax Grenache 2021 was a standout in this modern style, with its wide ranging and juicy fruits and attractive savoury twist carrying both Barossan power and moreish drinkability. The John Duval Wines Concilio Grenache Shiraz 2021 was slightly more serious, although in a similar vein, with user-friendly fruits and a beautifully supple and silky texture. Grenache is, unsurprisingly, a grape variety well suited to these modern bistro styles, and the Barossa clearly has plenty of potential to craft these wines. Another standout was Tim Smith’s take on the Rhône blend with a focus on mataro with his M.G.S 2021. The deliciously savoury heart to this wine, with its firm backbone of tannins, showed that modern emerging styles come in a range of forms and there is plenty of potential for alternative styles that retain traditional Barossan density of fruit. Perhaps what was most exciting from the tasting was how easily Barossan shiraz can be tuned to fulfil this lighter-framed niche with wines that still show that beautiful generosity of fruit at the heart of the Barossa yet with immediate drinkability, delicacy and finesse. The original Australian red burgundy style from the late 1800s shared some of these characteristics, although many modern versions have also used whole-bunch fruit and carbonic maceration to very good effect. The leading example was the Peter Lehmann Wines Hill & Valley Shiraz 2020, with vibrant, buoyant red fruits, fine tannins and juicy acidity, a delicious example of an early-drinking Barossan. Similarly, Rollick Wines Eden Valley ‘The Vice’ Shiraz 2019 was also a fragrant, minerally and slinky red, with a beautiful brightness and freshness of fruit. Shiraz did make up a surprisingly small number of successful entries in our emerging styles tasting, which suggests that local shiraz winemakers are only slowly moving to adjust their winemaking to the changing market, and there is perhaps plenty of opportunity for early movers to invest in this space. Unsurprisingly, the alternative varieties were an important component of wines submitted and there were some outstanding wines with strong varietal characters, in some cases from surprising grape varieties.
Barossa 2022
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