1998 Katnook Estate Coonawarra Shiraz

Opaque crimson colour. The nose is superb and promises much, with its intense aroma of spice, earth, truffle and dark chocolate, followed by blackpepper and farmyard end notes. In the Rhone Valley, they would regard this as an animal wine. Mouthfilling palate with flavours of chocolate, earth, mint, vanilla and toasted oak filling the palate, and supported by fine grained velvet smooth tannins. Just as all is finishing up in a rather splendid manner, some hard, bitter, smoky tar and strong coffee flavours emerge on the back palate, and seem to want to linger a lot longer than we would like. The wine is very good, but might have been sensational. We will re try the wine in a few weeks time to see if things settle down.

RATING: 92/100

VALUE: XXXX/5