Mr Rigg's McLaren Vale Shiraz

Mr Rigg's McLaren Vale Shiraz

With leftover pizza from our family gathering the other night - we opened from the cellar this vintage Australian Shiraz. 

 

This wine typifies everything we love in a Aussie Shiraz - big, thick, chewy, sweet forward fruits. The large heavy oversize bottle packaging hints at what is to come.

This blockbuster release was awarded 95 points by Wine Advocate upon initial review back in 2005.

It was aged 18 months in French oak (40% new). 

At twenty-one years this is likely at its Goldilock’s apex of its tasting profile, not too young, not too old, fully integrated and settled, by not likely to improve with any further aging. The label, foil, and most importantly, the fill level and cork were still in ideal condition. 

We tasted and I blogged about this wine in an earlier blogpost halfway back in its life, at ten years back in 2014. 

I pushed the CT (Cellartracker) drinking window out a couple more years at that time.

At that time, as with tonight, it was  a perfect compliment to the Italian pasta and soup with red meat, tomato and ricotta cheese. 

It was sinfully good with the caramel and sea salt gelato. 

I wrote at that time, I can't wait to finish the remaining partial bottle tonight with some hearty cheese. I'm already mourning the fact we only have a few bottles of this left in the cellar.

Tonight, this was consistent with that earlier tasting. Dark inky garnet colored, full bodied, rich, concentrated, complex, full forward sweet black and blue berry fruits, accented by a layer of mineral and tones of sweet caramel, cassis and graphite on a lingering tongue coating full tannin finish. And, yes, this was our last bottle of this vintage release, although we have the follow on 2005 release that I look forward to tasting. 

RM 93 points.

https://www.cellartracker.com/wine.asp?iWine=128274

https://go.cellartracker.com/wine/128274