2. Radburnd Cellars Syrah 2018.
Deep, dark and purple-hued, and with bright varietal aromas of plum, blackcurrant, mocha and warm spices, Approachable, with a tautness and tension. Balanced weight, acidity and concentration across the mid palate. A spine of supple tannins, and a nuance of well-integrated oak. A silken texture, building to a lengthy, drying, spicy finish. The phrase “serious” cropped up in a couple of notes.
Wow, this looks like one of the best tastings of NZ Syrah I’ve ever seen! Given the quality of what’s in the Top 10, this could well have been a landmark tasting for this type of wine in New Zealand?
Thanks Jo, we’ll be doing more in the future. Pinot Noir is next.
I assume you do give the wines scores? Why not publish those scores?
Hi Joe, yes, the process of judging the wines means they are allocated a score out of 100 by each judge. We simply add those up to determine the placings. We only publish those who are the Top 10 scoring wines (hence the name) but there are a lot more wines than just ten in the Tasting. At wine shows, wines are awarded medals – Gold, Silver and Bronze according to their scores – but, again, you don’t see the scores themeselves.
I do reviews of individual wines and publish a score our of 100 for that.
Thanks for your interest.
Did you see the new House and Garden Magazine? They wrote about the same wines as you have in your Top 10 Tasting? Were they at your Tasting?
Simon, no I haven’t read that magazine for years – I don’t think people do really read magazines now, do they? I had a long career (that I thoroughly enjoyed) in magazine publishing in its heyday; but it’s a twilight industry now – a bit sad to see, but things change – life moved on.
I know that others ‘in the industry’ – wine people, including writers, will have looked at WineFolio; but I doubt that anyone would just copy the content from here. Wines are available in plenty of places and you’d assume it would just be coincidence if someone wrote about the same ones. Unless it was like the same wines exactly – that would be weird. I can say that no other writers were at my Top 10 tastings. DWB
That’s an excellent tasting, I’m pleased someone like yourself is taking New Zealand Syrah seriously. It often seems to be an afterthought in other judging, like the big wine shows, where it used to be put in the same class as Shiraz?
Peter, thanks for reading… I believe that Syrah is one of the best varietals in NZ for showing ‘a sense of place’. It definitely deserves it’s own tasting. It will be interesting to see how this develops over the next couple of years – it could be that it will be as well regarded as our Pinot Noir in years to come. Speaking of which – Pinot is next – the Top 10 Tasting should be up in less than a month!