Agricola Flaxman Valley Naimanya & Home Shiraz 2025

Written By Campbell Mattinson
Bottle of Agricola Vintners Flaxman Valley Shiraz 2024 on a white background.

Agricola Flaxman Valley Naimanya & Home Shiraz 2025
AU$100, 13.6% alcohol, cork, Eden Valley.

Well, look. This wine is so good that I’m almost speechless. I’m tempted to just say that it’s “bloody magnificent,” as I did in the comments on The Winefront, and call it a day. It somehow manages to be complex, forceful, light and insistent at once. It tastes of nuts, peppers, red and black berried fruit, florals, earth, smoked meats and more, but if ever there was a wine that is more than the sum of its parts, this wine is it. Boy oh boy oh boy. The wide, encompassing, Glad-Wrap feel of the tannin; the flare; the focus; the joy. This wine is epically good in the freshest of ways. 97 points – Campbell Mattinson.

Campbell Mattinson

This post was written by Campbell Mattinson. Mattinson is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of The Winefront business. He is the author of five books on wine – four of which were bestsellers (The Wine Hunter, the Big Red Wine Book 2008, the Big Red Wine Book 2009, and the Big Red Wine Book 2010).

Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.

Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He’s the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He’s a past winner of a Louis Roederer International Wine Media Award; is the author of the award-winning book The Wine Hunter; and is the author of the best-selling novel We Were Not Men. He’s also a winner of a St Kilda Film Festival Award (as writer-director) and is a former winner of the national Best Australian Sports Writing Award. In 2026 three of his photographs were short-listed for the World Food Photography Awards.

Campbell Mattinson, who is 100% independent, has tasted between 5000 and 10,000 wines each and every year for the past 25 years. He tastes blind, in comparative brackets, as often as is practicable.

Campbell Mattinson is a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker and a wine critic. In all of these mediums his prime motive is to tell people's stories.

https://www.campbellmattinson.com
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