DE BORTOLI 1996 GS RESERVE SHIRAZ (Yarra Valley, VIC)
The trophy has caused plenty of controversy over the years mainly that the wines are too young and not a good indicator of longevity and quality—i.e. show ponies made to win the trophy.
I have been collecting winners for many years so that in 2002 & again in 2022 in collaboration with Winestate Magazine and Wolf Blass, we held comprehensive tastings of 40+ out of the 60 winners, which showed that the majority of them were build to last the distance and dispel the critics.
Today’s wine is the De Bortoli Wines 1996 GS Reserve Yarra Valley Shiraz, tasted recently with my tasting panel a.k.a. “The four fine fellows”
At twenty-eight years old it was still deep and densely coloured with subtle but complex bouquet of bottle maturation with a dusting of dried herbs and a smidge of earthiness. The palate was quite big, rich, deep and sublimely flavoured with a melange of tertiary flavours- spices, coffee, earthiness/forest floor and just a hint of chocolate.
As one of the panel said “bloody magnificent”
All in all a fabulous wine which was very satisfying and still has a long life ahead of it. It could envision it reaching 40 or may be even 50 years of age. – So definitely no “show pony”.
Whilst 95% of wine is drunk when young or even very, very young, there are merits to cellaring wines so as to enjoy their magnificence and they reach their zenith with time in the bottle. This wine was a brilliant example thereof.
Dan Traucki