2021 Langi Shiraz

Grown on the estate's 'Old Block' of shiraz vines, planted in 1969. It spent 16 months in French oak barriques (50% new). It's a magnificent release. It's fluid, elegant and controlled but, just a bit, it also stamps its feet and says: the world is mine. It's awash with cherry/plum, peanut shell, black pepper and floral flavours, and it's both silken to the touch, and (super) long through the finish. This is a wine.

Very deep, dark, brooding purple-red colour; the bouquet is powerful, rich and complex with a wide range of spice aromas that are immediately arresting and challenging to describe. Pepper, clove, bayleaf, turmeric, nutmeg, with fruit aromas in the black cherry, blackberry spectrum with a touch of espresso coffee. The wine is very full-bodied and powerful, the concentration impressive but not achieved at the expense of elegance or balance. Outstanding shiraz.

Medium-to-deep crimson. On the nose, black fruits, black olive, pepper and vanilla. With a broody intensity, this wine shows an amalgam of black, blue and red fruits on the palate, with mulberry at the forefront. Both spicy and earthy, it displays hints of purple florals and is structured by supple yet persistent tannins.

Ethereal, with granite and black pepper-sluiced fresh, persistent raspberry and blackberry fruit, a dancing backbone of acidity and dynamic, spiralling tannins. Awash with spices and violets – delicious detail – the long, elegant finish has a lick of milk chocolate and compelling, peppery, meaty, mineral back-palate resonance. From a long, relatively mild growing season, the harvest for this beautifully balanced vintage finished on 28 April. 100% whole-berry ferment.

From the old vines on the original block. A beautiful and enthusiastically expressive wine. Real energy and lift. Dry flowers and juicy dark cherries, ripe red berries, a bustling souk full of spices. Lashings of white pepper, some star anise, cardamom, mace. A seductive plushness to the palate, a gorgeously satiny sheen.

Ethereal, with granite and black pepper-sluiced fresh, persistent raspberry and blackberry fruit, a dancing backbone of acidity and dynamic, spiralling tannins. Awash with spices and violets – delicious detail – the long, elegant finish has a lick of milk chocolate and compelling, peppery, meaty, mineral back-palate resonance. From a long, relatively mild growing season, the harvest for this beautifully balanced vintage finished on 28 April. 100% whole-berry ferment.

The 2021 Langi Shiraz is blue-fruited and aromatic, with black spice and olive brine, field flowers and crushed rocks. It is kind of ethereal in its way. It has an authentic feeling, of the earth, and it's floral, fine and long, with substance and finesse. This is a superstar wine; it's really great. No whole-bunch grapes were used in this vintage. The block was largely planted in 1969. 14.8% alcohol (although if I had to guess, I would have said it was almost a whole percent less, such is its delicacy), sealed under screw cap.

The exceptional 2021 Shiraz Langi is supremely youthful and energetic, delivering a tight and robust core of tarry, liquorice and roasted meats laced with hot granite and dark spices. Great tension follows, with dense, ripe dark berries, new leather, tobacco and rivers of chalky tannin. Granitic minerality holds a steady over a finish of exceptional length. It’s too young to drink now, but it will offer plenty over the coming decade and beyond.

Featured in the ‘Standout Wines 2025’ of the Halliday Wine Companion Magazine, spring edition

A triumph of the triumvirate – ‘fruit-oak-tannin’ – seamless, youthful, aromatic, structural and, yes, spicy.

At the vertical, I wrote: This presents the peppers in the perfect spot. It’s a young wine but it has a mellow softness, the red berry flavours served pillowy, but into this softness the dark pepper characters land beautifully, and end up characterising it. There are roasted nut-shell characters here too, and some warmth, but regardless of this warmth there’s a world of charm, and spice, and persistence. 2018, 2019 and this 2021 really seemed to step the Langi game up, and of these releases the 2021 is the one.