Critics reviews
Jeb Dunnuck - 30/12/2013
About this WINE
Syrah/Shiraz
A noble black grape variety grown particularly in the Northern Rhône where it produces the great red wines of Hermitage, Cote Rôtie and Cornas, and in Australia where it produces wines of startling depth and intensity. Reasonably low yields are a crucial factor for quality as is picking at optimum ripeness. Its heartland, Hermitage and Côte Rôtie, consists of 270 hectares of steeply terraced vineyards producing wines that brim with pepper, spices, tar and black treacle when young. After 5-10 years they become smooth and velvety with pronounced fruit characteristics of damsons, raspberries, blackcurrants and loganberries.
It is now grown extensively in the Southern Rhône where it is blended with Grenache and Mourvèdre to produce the great red wines of Châteauneuf du Pape and Gigondas amongst others. Its spiritual home in Australia is the Barossa Valley, where there are plantings dating as far back as 1860. Australian Shiraz tends to be sweeter than its Northern Rhône counterpart and the best examples are redolent of new leather, dark chocolate, liquorice, and prunes and display a blackcurrant lusciousness.
South African producers such as Eben Sadie are now producing world- class Shiraz wines that represent astonishing value for money.
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Description
It has been a pleasure to witness the maturity of Emmanuel Darnaud since we introduced his wines to the UK market a decade ago. With the responsibilities of fatherhood and the prospect of inheriting vines in Hermitage has come a greater commercial understanding and a crystallisation of all the enthusiastic aspirations which informed his wines, with mixed results, in the early days. In 2011 he produced wines with linear harmony and great finesse.
Emmanuel’s holdings in “St Jo” are (it has to be said) modest; they comprise 70 metres squared inherited from father-in-law Bernard Faurie. Only 2,000 bottles are produced from these 30-year-old vines which are located on granitic slopes behind Mauves. The wine is full of bright, peppery fruit with crushed rock and bayleaf in support.
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