BEST OF A Beautiful Bunch

WOW, what an exciting judging of shiraz and syrah wines this year. For Winestate magazine’s annual judging of these wines it proved to be the highest overall rating of this variety ever achieved. This year from a total of 431 wines judged, we had 50 five stars and 60 four and a half star wines, an astonishing result. Much of this can be attributed to a fabulous 2016 Australian vintage for the variety. The consistency it created, this judging pits the iconic French names of , , and against the Aussie icons of , and . Needless to say, none of these wines are entered by the wineries so we go and buy them anyway. In a blind taste off if they get five stars then they’re truly worth the money. If they get knocked out, or achieve a lower rating we’ll report that too despite their “Icon” status. To keep them company we also judged another 400 or so wines in various price categories. As the land of shiraz, Australian wines featured predominantly, but we also had other wines from France, New Zealand and South Africa included.