Dowie Doole Reserve Shiraz 2022
$150, 14.5% alcohol, screwcap, McLaren Vale.
This is a hulk of a wine. It’s big in fruit flavour and big in oak, and carries big bones of tannin too. Tar, roses, sweet plums, kirsch and rust flavours run into peppercorn, malt, mint chocolate, toast and dust. Every sip of this wine feels significant. It’s balanced and harmonious, in its own way and by its own design. It’s a knockout wine. 95 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 (the home of Australia’s best wine reviews) and of 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. In 2026 three of his photographs were short-listed for the World Food Photography Awards.
Campbell Mattinson is a storyteller. He is a journalist, a photographer, a filmmaker and a wine critic, and in all of these mediums his prime motive is to tell people's stories.
