Mount Pleasant 1880 Vines Old Hill Vineyard Shiraz 2023

The oldest 1880 plantings of the Old Hill at Mount Pleasant are rare ancestral vines producing intense, structural and powerful Shiraz.

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Tasting Notes

 Mount Pleasant 1880 Vines Old Hill Vineyard Shiraz 2023

"Amazing to think that Maurice O’Shea was using 40 to 50 year old vines by the time he got around to this vineyard. Now we get it at 140-plus years, or winemaker Adrian Sparks does.

MB: Chewy, chunky, rich and dense. A potent and deeply scented and flavoured wine, robust in sandy tannin, vivid in purple and black berry fruitiness, forest floor, gum leaf, a touch or stewed rhubarb, clove, black olive, dark chocolate. A sweetness ebbs and flows. It does all this with control, however, a sheath of fine, suede tannin. Multi-dimensional. Proper stuff here, an old school, good school idiom, nailed so well. 97+ points.

KS: Painted in shades of black and blue fruit. A smidge of caramel oak comes first, nutmeg then figs, aniseed, violet and blue plum. It’s clear from the first sip that this needs a lot of time to unfurl, in the glass, in the bottle… Dark slate smooth texture, feathery almost, bloody, salty, very fine velvety tannins, tight, yes, all at once, carrying flavour detail long and in a savoury manner. English Breakfast tea perfume lingering long in the aftertaste. Elegant and deeply satisfying. Stunning wine. 97 points

GW: Deep, dark, liquorice and iodine, still has perfume though. Medium to full-bodied, a powerhouse of inky Hunter Shiraz, with black and red fruit, ferrous tannin, concentrated, some savoury bits, very long, and what an emphatic statement of old vine Hunter Shiraz in a great vintage it is. 97 points" 97+ Points, The Wine Front

"Deep and youthful purple colour; dried herbs, freshly turned earth and savoury dusty-oak nuances on the nose. It's full bodied and loaded with drying tannins, deep-set blackberry and dried cherry fruits lurking beneath. A very young wine that needs time and has heaps of potential." 95 Points, Huon Hooke, The Real Review

The famed estate of Mount Pleasant has a well-storied past, founded by the visionary of Australian wine, Maurice O’Shea. It includes plantings of ancestral vines of 1880, as well as Australia’s oldest mother vine Pinot Noir planted in 1921 by O’Shea himself. It is the home of some of the first fine wines of Australia, and with just five winemakers over its 100-year history, it has maintained its status as a benchmark of the Hunter classics, Shiraz and Semillon.

Producer website: https://www.mountpleasantwines.com.au/

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