ON ANALYSING the ratings of the American Wine Spectator and Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate, two of the world’s most influential wine magazines, on South Australia’s specialist old-vine shiraz producer Clarendon Hills, and comparing these
The Clarendon Hills’ 13-year-old-vine growers are scattered within a 6km radius of Clarendon, in the Adelaide Hills, high above the McLaren Vale region.
The proprietor and wine-maker Roman Bratasiuk has had a war of words with many of Australia’s most prominent wine critics and dismissively refuses to send samples to Australian wine writers.
Internationally, the reviews of his wines are truly extraordinary.
For example, his combined results for his many individual vineyard shiraz and grenache releases from the 2006 vintage alone have received more stratospheric rankings than the 1994 to 2002 vintage Grange Hermitage.
Are the wines worth these ratings? Well, we had to buy the wines to find out.
Yep, the wines are truly outstanding. We gave the glorious 2006 Hickinbotham Shiraz ($128.65) 19pts. It was only matched by the 2005 Moss Wood Cabernet Sauvignon and 2001, 2002 and 2005 Leeuwin Art Series chardonnays of the more than 12,000 Australian wines that we have rated in the past 24 months.
Despite this Hickinbotham accolade, the most astounding wine of the tasting was the sublime and absolutely extraordinary 2006 Astralis Shiraz (19.5pts $514.95) which in terms of quality I believe matches the greatest Australian wine of any sort that I have ever tasted, the extremely rare 1953 Penfold’s Grange cabernet release.
The American Wine Spectator has rated this wine at 98 points and higher than any Grange Hermitage in the previously mentioned vertical line-up and Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate has tentatively ranked it at 96 to 99 points, thus potentially matching his 99-point rated 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2005 vintages of this wine and the 1998 Grange Hermitage.
This wine shows dense and long, classically handled, powerful and fine-knit shiraz fruit of extraordinary quality.
This is one of the two greatest Australian wines I have ever tasted and it fully justifies the American Wine Spectator’s rating of 98 points out of 100, and Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate’s 96-99 points while they await further tastings to define this further.
Any comparison of ratings over time is constrained by the Clarendon Hills’ foundation date in 1993 and the Wine Advocate’s most recent 2002 rating of Penfolds Grange Hermitage.
During that time, the American Wine Spectator has ranked six Henschke red wines at 95 points or above, seven Penfolds and seven Clarendon Hills reds.
Robert’s Parker’s Wine Advocate gave the same accolade to five Henschke reds, four Penfolds reds and 23 Clarendon Hills wines.
Since then, in an even more amazing sequence of triumphs, the Wine Spectator between 2003 and 2006 rated the Astralis at 95, 97, 96 and 98 points while the Wine Advocate reviewed these same wines at 99 points, 98, 99, and as previously mentioned, a tentative 96-99 points. The pick of the 2006 Clarendon Hills wines are as follows: Brookman Vineyard Shiraz (RRP$128.65 and 18.7pts), Liandra Vineyard Shiraz (RRP$128.65 and 18.7pts), the Hickinbotham Vineyard Shiraz (RRP$128.65 and 19pts) and the almost perfect Astralis Shiraz (RRP$514.95 and 19.5pts).