CRITIC REVIEWS
Lisa Perrotti-Brown
This 2013 Shiraz St Henri follows in the blockbuster footsteps of the 2010 and 2012. The blend is 96% Shiraz with 4% Cabernet Sauvignon and the fruit sources are far and wide, including a real mix of terroirs: McLaren Vale, Adelaide Hills, Barossa Valley, Clare Valley, Padthaway and Port Lincoln. It spent 12 months in 50+-year-old casks. Deep garnet-purple colored, the youthfully reticent nose is complex, offering loam, aged meat, licorice, tar, scorched earth, fenugreek and cloves over a cherry cordial, blueberry pie and dried mulberries core. The medium to full-bodied palate reveals lovely, understated elegance and depth with a firm backbone of ripe, grainy tannins and many fruit and spice layers emerging on the finish. This is one for the long-long haul and, at a fraction of the price of Grange, should be where the smart money goes for stocking the cellar.
Anthony Rose
One of my favourite Penfolds styles, in part because it eschews new oak in favour of large oak vats. This multi-regional blend of 96% Shiraz and 4% Cabernet Sauvignon boasts a seductively sweet fragrance of herbs and spices followed by a full-bodied blueberry-like opulence, with a note of tar and balsamic complexity behind a firm acid spine.