PRE ARRIVAL 2021 Craiglee Shiraz 1500ml Magnum
Regular price $138.00 Sale price $127.00AVAILABLE LATE JULY 2025
'If Pat Carmody can’t make great shiraz, then we should all shut up shop. He’s only been doing so at Craiglee for, oh, about 40-plus years. There's a DNA imprint to this, with a whorl of dark fruit, warm spices shot through, cedary oak and wafts of red roses. Very savoury though, fuller bodied with archetypal Craiglee tannins supple, shapely and ripe. Yes, a lovely wine made by a legend.' Jane Faulkner, Halliday Wine Companion
This wine, although Pat says it’s tight, it does have a “creamy”, plump, red fruited richness and suppleness, along with a pervasive nuanced spice, ripe fruit and green / white pepper character that “brands” it as a fine Craiglee.
Cheers, Randall.
Craiglee is one of Australia's finest producers, but constantly flies under the radar. A great thing for fans and those in the know, as it has resulted in some of Australia's finest wine remaining somewhat available, and more importantly, incredibly reasonably priced. Vines were first planted at Craiglee in 1863, and the 1872 "Hermitage" (shiraz) was immortalised by various awards at a prestigious international wine competiton in Vienna. The winery fell defunct in the Depression, but bottles of the 1872 survived on their reputation to be opened in 1972. John Brown Sr (of Brown Brothers) was so impressed by the hundred-year-old wine that he convinced a young Pat Carmody, an agricultural science student working his family farm on the site of the old Craiglee vineyard, to replant vines at the site. Fast-forward to today, and Pat is still making wine from estate-grown, hand-picked fruit in the same bluestone winery built over 150 years ago. If one is looking for a definitive example of Victorian shiraz, look no further. A Cornas or Hermitage of the same pedigree would be frighteningly expensive!
Cheers, Randall