2020 Penfolds St Henri Shiraz

Other Reviews....
The 2020 Shiraz St Henri lives up to its traditional claret billing, reserved, subtle and built to last. Excellent color to begin before delivering a refined mix of coca, blackberry and black olive tapenade with a subtle dusting of old spice. It's mid-weight, firm and stylish, with more gravel and graphite flavors starting to emerge. The vintages' firm tannins are well-matched and draw out a lengthy finish. You can bank off this drinking well for a couple of decades. Drink 2028 - 2042.
94 Points
Angus Hughson - Antonio Galloni's Vinous

St Henri has always been one of my favourite Penfolds wines. A multiregional shiraz aged for 12 months in large, old oak vats, I was always enamored with its less percussive attributes and proven lineage of cellar worthiness. Crimson with pure notes of plum compote, cherry clafoutis, roasting meats, earth, spice, ironstone, mocha, pan juices and the fainest wisp of wintergreen. It's such a comforting wine, with its unobstructed view of fruit and vintage, finishing savoury with powdery tannin grip and a dusting of cocoa powder and coal dust. Lovely stuff. Drink 2023 - 2045.
96 Points
Dave Brookes - Halliday's Australian Wine Companion

Dense, dank and brooding. A very warm vintage, serving an incantation of licorice strap, clove, camphor, dried nori and a spicy backdrop to a flood of dark, saturated fruits. Often the cuvee that I prefer most, however the tannins in this instance are more four-square, burlier, thick grape skin-gritty and less resolved than usual. A bit drying. The oak, classy and firm, compressing and directing. Best after 2028.
94 Points
Ned Goodwin MW - JamesSuckling.com

Routinely my favorite red cuvée in the Penfolds Collection (matured in large-format seasoned French oak), there is always a freshness and suppleness to the fruit that is most elegant in the glass. Here, the 2020 St Henri Shiraz shows the warm and low-yielding season from whence it came in the splay of roasted beetroot, red fruits and meats on the mid-palate. A chunky, meaty iteration of this wine, the tannins are grippy and full in the mouth. You get aniseed and clove through the finish. 14.5% alcohol, sealed under screw cap. Drink 2023 - 2040.
93 Points
Erin Larkin - Robert Parker's Wine Advocate

Always the most unique, savoury and graceful red in the Penfolds stable, beloved for the fact it does not see any new oak (just 12 months in large, seasoned vats) and thereby emphasises the unadulterated purity of South Australian Shiraz. And the dry, low-yielding 2020 vintage has delivered an already approachable St Henri whose score may well improve with further maturation (in the meantime I wait with rapt anticipation for the 2021…). More McLaren Vale fruit joins the Barossa and Clare parcels this vintage thanks to late summer rain, and the result is a textured, mineral, fresh-fruited profile that conjures up rhubarb, cherries and wild strawberries along with seaweed, curry spices and polished leather enveloped in dusty, textured tannins. Drink 2023 - 2050.
95 Points
Tina Gellie - Decanter

Penfolds St Henri Shiraz 2020. Grown in the McLaren Vale, Barossa Valley and Clare Valley regions. 12 months in large seasoned oak vats.
This is a bit of a surprise packet. It’s quite bold for a St henri. It’s also inherently complex, even as a young wine. Meats, herbs, cherries and plums, with clove, fennel and smoke notes dancing throughout. It’s juicy. It plays treble and bass. It’s both typical and atypical. St Henri is often the hardest wine to access as a young wine of all the Penfolds’ wines; here we are again. It’s a juicy conundrum inside a meaty enigma. No one will mind the extra fruit power here. Drink 2026 - 2036+
94+ Points
Campbell Mattinson - The Wine Front