2021 Yalumba The Caley Cabernet Shiraz

This is the seventh release of Yalumba’s flagship wine, the ‘Caley’ and it’s up there with their best yet. A classic marriage of two noble grape varieties sourced from two of Australia’s greatest wine regions, Coonawarra and Barossa it’s a blend of 74% Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon and 26% Barossa Shiraz. The wine is matured for 18 months in a mix of 21% new French oak barriques with the balance in 1 year and older French oak barriques.

A seamless blend of Cabernet and Shiraz highlighted by extraordinary length and wonderful finesse.

Pours with spectacular colour density featuring an inky black heart alongside a deep dark red black hue. Soaring through the olfactory senses is a complex matrix of blackcurrant, liquorice and mulberry scents interwoven with vanillin cedar, subtle earthy dark chocolate, tobacco, pepper and bay leaf notes. Rich yet gorgeously refined and structured, the mid weighted palate is flooded with red to black currant, liquorice, dark chocolate and ripe mulberry fruits which meld into a spicy vanillin cedar, earthy tobacco and bay leaf infused back drop. Displaying immaculate tannin integration and outstanding power, it concludes long, highly finessed and sophisticated.
Drink over the next 20 years.
Alc. 14.5%

Other Reviews...
At this viewing (and we are a long way off from this wine's intended release), we are in for a very special wine – Yalumba's flagship, from the excellent 2021 vintage. It is a picture of elegance and fruit power in one package. There is a glass-staining deep crimson colour for starters. The fruit, seemingly reduced to an essence, is all blackberry, cassis, black cherry and dark plum. Hints of deep spice, blackforest cake, licorice, cedar, tobacco pouch, bouquet garni, black olive tapenade, pencil shavings, roast beef, earth, veal glace and dark chocolate. The tannins are powdery, layered and in perfect resolution, the oak sitting simpatico with the deep fruit, the finish stretching out for a considerable length of time. The best Caley release thus far for mine. Drink by 2024.
99 points
Dave Brookes - James Halliday’s Australian Wine Companion

It might be suspicion only but one feels that our venerable old Barossa producer, Yalumba, may have felt that, as impressive as its portfolio of wines is, the world did not see them having a release which challenged the Granges and the Hills of Grace and a surprising number of new releases at ridiculously high and arguably undeserved prices. Enter this wine, although it still sits well below how others when we start talking cost, but then that is only to its advantage. They opted for the great Aussie red blend to take it away from the usual single variety rock stars. It is also a blend of regions with the Cabernet Sauvignon from Coonawarra and the Shiraz from the Barossa. There have been some absolutely superb releases of this wine over the years but for me, none better than this 2021. It is a superstar. Under cork. Gleaming blood red/maroon, the nose reveals notes of bright cherries, tobacco leaves, spices, well integrated oak, plums, blackberries, aniseed, cassis and beef stock. It is subtle and seductive, generous and plush, offering a fine line of acidity in great length. There are silky tannins on the lingering finish. Superbly focused, this is surely the best Caley to come my way (and I have seen them all). Stonkingly good, if one wishes to get technical. Thirty years with ease. Drink 2026-2056.
99 points
Ken Gargett – WinePilot.com

The 2021 The Caley Cabernet Shiraz hails from an excellent year in South Australia. The season was warm but not hot (in fact, it has been described as cool, although I think "mild" and "benign" are more accurate terms) and offered both growers and makers the opportunity to get the best of their vineyards and produce some of the best wines possible. These should be exceptionally long-lived wines. So here, the 2021 The Caley Cabernet Shiraz leads with a nose of deep dark chocolate, dark fruits, mahogany and black olive tapenade. In the mouth, the tannins are both intense and profuse, encasing the fruit at this early stage yet promising many years in the future to come. This is persistent and long, powerful and concentrated. Sealed under Diam and wax. Drink 2026-2051.
97 points
Erin Larkin – Robert Parker’s The Wine Advocate

This is not only the greatest wine to ever emerge from the hallowed halls of Yalumba, it is categorically the finest exemplar of the great Australian blend of the modern era, and the equal of the greatest in history. Kevin KG Glastonbury’s relentless fanaticism has fused Coonawarra Cabernet with Barossa shiraz (26%) to perfection, and I use this word very deliberately.
While I was not alive at the time to have the privilege of tasting it in its youth, it has perhaps not been since Max Schubert’s legendary 1962 Penfolds Bin 60A that this union has been mastered with such breathtaking harmony. Since its inaugural release a decade ago, The Caley has set the standard for refinement in cabernet shiraz, reincarnating the Coonawarra/Barossa blends of Yalumba of a half- century ago to become the first wine to win Matthew Jukes and my The Great Australian Red competition four times with three vintages, each of which I scored 98-99 points. 2021 embraces this profound legacy and takes it further to establish an all-new benchmark. It elevates this distinguished label by effortlessly contrasting greater depth of black fruits, higher lift of violet fragrance, more energetic, cool season acidity and more profound confidence of tannins that are at once finer and more velvety and yet somehow stronger, more rigid and more enduring - the pinnacle of KG’s life work. I have bestowed a perfect score on an Australian table wine only once in the past decade, and The Caley 2021 is every bit deserving. Be sure to be first in line when it is unleashed on 1 May 2026.
100 Points
Tyson Stelzer

I am infinitely grateful to have creator, creative and creation knowledge of this wine, from its inception to this moment in time. All vintages, all progressions, all inflections and all moments of ‘worry’ have been shared, and so when a wine, and there are few on the planet with this epic consistency of production, is released, the world must pay attention. There is so much class here, it is extraordinary. How would you place this wine if you were an alien landing at our intergalactic hub in search of a refreshing libation? It could only be a wine from the 5263 quadrant of SA, which I am sure an alien could compute faster than most humans. But there is a looming sense of disquiet about this 74% Coonawarra wine, because it has an x-factor that transports into an otherworldly plane that is simply jaw-dropping. My wine mind does all it can to personify every sip I taste and yet, as much as I admire all the James Bonds, Hans Solo, and even, and this might sound somewhat incongruous, the Jackson Lambs of this world, this wine has no earthly human form synonym. It soars, mythical, half-human, half-deity, and it holds back more than it gives, and then releases unfathomable mysteries when you momentarily switch off. It is, in short, epic. I wondered if any wine could eclipse the inaugural 2012 The Caley, and then a handful of them have done just this. 2021 is the most recent to do so, and I am thrilled to bring it to your attention.
20/20
Matthew Jukes