Allegiance Wines The Tiger McLaren Vale Shiraz 2023
$30, 14.5% alcohol, screwcap, McLaren Vale.
Plum and sultana flavours merge into peppercorn and toast. It’s a pretty simple formula but it’s ripe, well polished and satisfying. Orange rind and red licorice characters are here too, if you look hard enough, but this is essentially a medium-weight red wine with no rough edges. 90 points.
This article was written by Campbell Mattinson, former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion book, former editor of Halliday magazine, former editor of Australian Sommelier Magazine and founder of both The Winefront site (founded in 2002, and the home of Australia’s best Australian wine reviews) and Mattinson Photography.
Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer since 1987. 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.
Mattinson, who is 100% independent, puts a score out of 100 on every wine that he reviews. But what he’d rather do, is tell you the wine’s story.
