Tasting Notes
colour
Dark purple-black and shiny.
aroma
A deep brooding nose full of violets, blood plum and baking spices. Intense black cherries, and lifted rose petals; this wine has density and freshness with serious concentration.
palate
The palate is medium-bodied yet powerful and expressive with dark fruits, mocha spice, mouth-coating tannin structure and smoky oak framing this exceptional Pyrenees Shiraz.
cellaring
Enjoy over the next three to eight years.
Technical
vintage
The growing season was ideal, warm but not hot, a perfect amount of rainfall in the growing season allowed fruit to be picked at relatively low potential alcohol, but with a ripe and super fine tannin structure.
winemaking
The fruit for this wine was sourced from the original Dalwhinnie estate vineyards, where it was fermented in small batches for 10-14 days in open top fermenters. Once approaching dryness the wine was pressed directly to French oak barriques for a 20 month maturation. Careful barrel selection was carried out to produce the final Moonambel blend.
region
Pyrenees
variety
Shiraz
analysis
- Alcohol: 14.0%
Food Pairings
Slow-braised lamb shank with a creamy mash.
Reviews
halliday wine companion 2024
Pyrenees shiraz matured in all-French oak. It's by no means a massive wine but it feels voluminous thanks to the spread of flavour and the way it expands through the palate. This is a very good wine. Satsuma plum, soy, sweet spice and jellied cherry notes blend with star anise, cedar and woodsmoke. It's lively, exotic, generous and sophisticated; it's many things.
95
Max Allen, Australian Financial Review, March 2024
The Moonambel Shiraz is an amalgam of grapes grown on the various blocks across Dalwhinnie’s 10-hectare vineyard – both the leaner, spicier, more structured characters of the hillside blocks and the richer, rounder character of the fruit grown in the deeper soils of the flatter country. Very pretty, appealing perfume, some hints of dried herbs and flowers, glossy black cherry fruit and finishing with savoury cherry-pip dryness.
Garly Walsh, The Wine Front 2024
Lovely to see these Dalwhinnie wines again.
Spicy, robust, tea and dried flowers, blackberry, roast beef and dripping. It’s medium to full-bodied, quite meaty, but also has lavish spice and grainy grip, something of a port wine jelly richness too, in with all that meat, dried herb and black olive savoury stuff, then black cherry and blood, on a finish of very good length. Also, wheatgerm, but don’t mind me. It has a fair amount of chew to it, and sooty tannin, but it’s an excellent wine. I’m either 93 or 94, but on balance, the character and personality of it wins me over.
94
