Bright dark ruby. Very fresh but brooding aromas of crystallized black raspberry, violet, dark chocolate, mocha and game. Rather closed and unforthcoming on the palate, but the wine's great depth of flavor and precision are already apparent. A step up from the last two wines in sheer intensity. Finishes with great sweetness of fruit, superb grip, and noble tannins that coat the teeth. This will be lush with five or six years of bottle age. Also tasted: 1998 Shiraz Brookman Vineyard Clarendon. (The Australian Premium Wine Collection, imported by USA Wine West, Berkeley, CA)

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Just beginning to emerge from a relatively dormant state, this prodigious wine was showing the best it has yet performed., suggesting again that Clarendon Hills wines behave more like European wines in terms of needing time in the bottle. The saturated blue/purple color offers up notes of ripe black fruits intermixed with graphite, vanilla, mineral, and spice. Extremely thick, with a viscous texture, good underlying tannin and acidity, and fabulous length (nearly 50 seconds), this is certainly a prodigious effort that is now living up to the fame and extraordinary quality of this vintage. Nevertheless, I thought the wine needed about five years of cellaring two years ago, but now I tend to think it needs at least another 5-7 years of cellaring before it will begin to become an adolescent. It is a majestic, multi-dimensional, individualistic wine that certainly is world-class and undoubtedly profound.

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Deep, dark and dense, a powerfully concentrated mouthful of cherry, blackberry, plum and exotic spice flavors that linger on the beautifully crafted finish. Stylish and graceful, it also has power. 480 cases made.

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