1998 Stonewell Shiraz

[Gianna]

Scrimmaging around the cellar for something to open tonight finally led me to open my case of the 1998 Stonewell Shiraz. I’ve wanted to try one of these for a quite a while now given the fairly polarised opinions this wine.

A perfect cork escaped from the bottle without a trace of leakage, a good start. After the first swirl I noticed how it clung to the glass and crawled down like an octopus. A beautiful perfume filled the room. Heavy smells of coffee beans, vanilla sticks, chocolate and mocha, licorice and sweet oak were all very dominant. I immediately sensed this wine will have plenty of years ahead of it.

The taste is dusty and floral but with layers of purple plums and licorice flavours. A smooth finish, but not too complex, but yet this is a good wine. Will decant for a while and come back to notice the changes.

Decanted for 3 hrs and this wine has evolved a great deal. The floral flavours had all disappeared and a more concentrated earthy shiraz flavour had developed. This is a well structure wine, with balance and backbone. I like and believe it will continue to improve and soften over the years to produce a fine aged shiraz. 90 pts and will probably improve in 2 years

[Maximus]

I agree totally Gianna. I'm a big fan of this wine, and the '99 is growing on me too. Plan to have one of these over Xmas at some point so I'll post my impressions.

Cheers,

[Olivier Collin]

I definitely agree with your assessment: Stonewell 1998 is rather structured, perhaps a bit backward at this stage. Should be excellent in 3-5 years. At this stage, I prefer the 1999 which has been really developing nicely.

[Jordan]

I haven't had the 1998 Stonewell but I too am a fan of the 1999 version of he wine. Good Stonewells can go a long distance - I have been lucky enough to try some late eighties and early nineties vintages from a friends cellar which were showed well over the past few years.