2023 Forest Hill Vineyard Block 9 Shiraz

97 POINTS

Ray Jordan

This excellent block has been dry grown since being planted in 1985. A little more hands-on here compared to the standard shiraz with hand plunging daily. Once again, it has been put into a larger format oak, which helps strike such a precise oak and fruit balance. It’s an elegant wine with bright red fruits displaying some quite exotic spices and a little dried herb. Plenty of time in the cellar will enhance.

96 POINTS

Cassandra Charlick - Winepilot

Intensely pigmented – magenta almost. This is young, but so expressive. A core of black fruit, brambles and wild blueberry spice is layered with baked salt, milk chocolate toast, charcoal and plenty of savoury, terracotta dust. A wild, iodine, ferrous note compels. The palate is vivid, with a mouth-filling energy that draws a long line of fruit, hung taut with fine, lacy, yet firm acidity. This is so vibrant and concentrated that it’s like a new palette of gouache paints, vivid and pure and filled with excitement for what is to come from it. Whole bunch spice squeezes the palate, and the almost chalky tannins are structural without bulk. This feels like an expression of the vineyard, there is no oak or overworked winemaking to get in the way of the expression. A wonderful union of people and place.

95 POINTS

Mike Bennie - Halliday Wine Companion

Multiple picks from the single site lend complexity to the wine. Medium weight, silky textured and highly perfumed red wine with a pleasing, savoury bent. Red cherry, a touch of cola, some green olive, game meat, dusty spices, mint and pepper. Lithe and fresh feeling with a light dusting of grippy tannin that falls in a web over the wine. A sense of elegance, and a distinct 'syrah-like' sensibility to this wine. It's not trying too hard, but effortlessly makes the (high) grade.

95 POINTS

Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate

The 2023 Block 9 Shiraz is excellent. It is concentrated and floral, dark-fruited and substantial, yet the tannins provide capaciousness and texture on the palate that gives room to all of the other elements at play here. It is so good. 14% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.

94 POINTS

Campbell Mattinson - The Wine Front

Exquisitely good. Bright cherry-plum flavours come deftly infused with bell pepper, black pepper, woodsmoke, cedarwood and general herbage. Fruit is the key player here though, served elegant and delivered with a mouth-watering freshness. Tannin, stitched intricately into place, completes a beautiful, finely-wrought picture.

94 POINTS

Angus Hughson - Vinous

The 2023 Shiraz Block 9 is a bold and savory Mount Barker expression of Shiraz, offering layers of black olive tapenade, dried herbs and sweet blackberry aromas wrapped in a sweater of toasted French oak. A European feel emerges on the palate, with gravelly, earthy flavors in a strongly savory and tannic package. Classy and aristocratic with rivers of potential.