Yangarra High Sands Grenache 2024

99 POINTS

Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate

The 2024 High Sands Grenache includes a little component of whole bunches for the first time. This component was vinified as 100% whole bunch, and this was added incrementally until the desired outcome was achieved—the total was only around 10% in the end. For me, the nose is fresher and more fragrant, the palate has more capaciousness, and the perfume translates with seamlessness and eloquence on the palate. The oak component is invisible (perhaps just a factor of the fruit character of the year, as the proportion of "new" or "how much" has not changed), and the fruit is a product of the sensational 2024 vintage. Wow. This is an important evolution in the history of this great wine, and while not all are developments that a (any) winemaker may choose, this one is both obvious and genius. This is an unbelievable wine. This is inherently McLaren Vale, which is emerging as a unique proposition in the global realm of fine Grenache. 14% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.

99 POINTS

David Sly - Decanter

This energetic, finely sculpted Grenache represents the high-water mark of what Yangarra’s late winemaker Peter Fraser strived to capture from this unique 1.7 hectare block of 1946 bush vines on deep, ancient sand. It’s a delicate balancing act, showing bountiful aromas of perfumed red berries, yet still bound by restraint and elegance. There is luscious satsuma plum, dazzling fresh raspberry and a hint of clove on a lively, lengthy mid-palate that is never allowed to run wild. Instead, a keen savoury finish is defined by finely-sculped fine-grain tannins. Complex and engrossing.

98 POINTS

Marcus Ellis - Halliday Wine Companion

It's hard not to feel a solemnity with these wines, the penultimate ones under the stewardship of the late Peter Fraser. Tasting the results of decades of hard work, deep thought and rare ability so lucidly on display in the glass. The irretrievable loss. But there’s some solace there, too, as the legacy feels indelible, for decades in the wines he made, but for generations in the talent he fostered and the makers he inspired. High Sands is the Yangarra polestar, and, having been privileged to taste a decade-deep vertical, the upward trajectory is as clear to me as it is exciting. Nothing changes that, and the team at Yangarra understands and can execute and develop the vision better than anyone ever could. The first year a whole-bunch portion was used, making up 15% of the final blend, with another parcel two and a half months on skins, with maturation in ceramic eggs and old, thick-walled Austrian oak. Increasingly, I find this a hard wine to judge, so special is its place in Australian wine. A thing I admire is the incremental shift to more elegance, a lesson learned in the cooler years, then applied to the warmer ones. This has a little more matter than the '23, tracing the conditions, but the detail, definition and finesse are constants. It is generally mandatory to use flavour descriptors in a tasting note. Here, I feel no need to be overly specific. Red fruits? Yes. Savoury? Yes. It’s another seamless wine, resounding echoes of place the key, and so patiently cared for, so lovingly articulated, so finely but commandingly structured, and with such a long time ahead of it.

95 POINTS

Mike Bennie - The Wine Front

High stakes, High Sands, and high points, all over the place. A terrific run with wine/site. Crisp in its fringes, juicy at its core, a restraint in shale and slate-like rocky minerality, dark cherry, rose hip jam, black tea and a dusting of cocoa powder. It all fits together in a sleek, compact frame and zooms off to infinity with a mouth-watering comet trail of briny freshness. It gives off a bit of a sense of darker fruit than expected, a bit of woody inflection, but seems to haul it all in very well, just a caveat in all that, not a derision. Pretty super, really.