Chapel Hill Road Block Shiraz 2023
$70, 14.5% alcohol, screwcap, McLaren Vale.
This is a solid block of wine. It’s dark and substantial, with dense flavours of blackberry, saltbush, chocolate, potpourri and peppercorn and splashes of smoked cedar and mint as well. Tannin has melted straight down into the fruit, the aftertaste then begging Christmas cake characters. It’s neat and tidy but there sure is a whole lot of wine here.
93 points
Campbell Mattinson has been an independent journalist, wine critic and photographer for forty years. He founded The Winefront, is a former chief editor of the Halliday Wine Companion (and former editor of Halliday magazine), and is the only Australian to have won the Australian Wine Communicator of the Year Award more than once. He is 100% independent, and tastes between 5,000 and 10,000 wines each year, blind and in comparative brackets as often as is practicable.
Mattinson is also the founder of the Mattinson Photography business.
