Vintage Festival Tastings

During a week at the hugely successful Barossa Vintage Festival, Philip White blind-tasted some real glories...

... "The throng of wine writers on last week's informative and luxurious tour was delighted to taste the Barossa's best. But while we worked on glasses of some extremely expensive wines, the hectares of glittering tanks that surrounded us indicated a story of different volumes and values.

I did taste some delicious wines, of course, and here list my favourites. You should appreciate that some of the following modestly priced bottles thrashed others that cost obscenely pretentious, presumptuous amounts."

Glaetzer Shiraz 1999
92+++ points

"Luxurious, focused, polished and intense, this incredible well of mystery remains slender and elegant in the face of all that compressed aroma and flavour. Its sweet, delicious fruit is wrapped in a straitjacket of extravagant oak, but it's in balance, and it will assimilate perfectly given five or six years in the dungeon. Then, it will last for well over a decade.
Truly Barossa."

Philip listed only six wines with Glaetzer Shiraz 1999 being third.