2018 Standish Lamella Shiraz

The Standish Wine Company, founded in 1999 by sixth-generation Barossa vigneron Dan Standish, produces ultra-limited, single-vineyard Shiraz from dry-grown, old-vine sites across sub-regions like Greenock, Marananga, Krondorf, and Eden Valley. Using wild fermentation, whole-bunch inclusion, foot treading, basket pressing, and aging in French oak, Standish crafts powerful yet refined wines that express purity, intensity, and a strong sense of place. Highly sought-after and released in tiny quantities, each bottling captures the essence of its vineyard with precision and flair.

Known for its lifted aromatics, precision, and finesse, Lamella is a strikingly pure and detailed Shiraz. Typically sourced from high-altitude sites, it’s the most ethereal and finely structured wine in the Standish range.

Limit 1 per person.

Other Reviews....
Another potentially perfect wine, the 2018 Lamella Shiraz, from the Eden Valley, is full-bodied and velvety in texture. Offering swirls of complex mixed berries, tea and spice, it finishes long and tannic, with plenty of backbone and structure, plus intriguing hints of espresso and chocolate. In contrast to The Standish, it's more impressive, while The Standish is more opulent and generous. Drink 2023 - 2040.
98-100 points
Joe Czerwinski - Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

From the Hutton Vale Vineyard. This is very fragrant, very spicy and lightly peppery with such a distinctive nose, offering blueberries and some cedary oak, as well as berry-pastry, pie-crust and spicy notes. The palate has such distinctive freshness and detail with a granular texture to the tannins (100% whole cluster fermentation) and brightness from cooler-climate acidity. Dense, focused finish. This needs five years to settle, best from 2026.
97 points
jamessuckling.com

Hutton Vale Farm, Eden Valley. It’s sold out at the winery, I believe, and for me, it’s the best, and most complete wine from the 2018 releases. I don’t think Barossa/Eden Shiraz gets much better than this, and, so pleasingly, oak is not a feature of the wine. Great wines, to my tastes, are rarely oak-driven.
It’s the quality of tannin that marks this out as a special wine. So dense, so ‘mineral’, it’s a cascade of shale tumbling through the mouth. Perfume of Earl Grey tea, sage and mint, black cherry and blueberry, chocolate and espresso. It’s fresh, with a raspberry succulence, inner-perfume of dried rose and lavender, cooling almost minty fresh acidity, poached rhubarb, and a slick of ferrous tannin on a finish of enormous length. Immense structure, delivered with precision and grace. It feels like falling into a private universe. Drink 2023 - 2040+.
98 points
Gary Walsh - The Wine Front