Shadowfax, the winery located at Werribee Park in the aromatic western environs of Port Phillip Bay, Victoria, is now releasing wines whose calibre justifies the expectation generated by its flamboyant presence and not insignificant investment. The wines that prompt me to make this remark are the winery’s twin shirazes from Heathcote, Victoria, from the 2001 vintage. Bought by Shadowfax in July 2000 from their founder, Albino Zuber, the vineyards known as Pink Cliffs and One Eye (initially the ‘home vineyard of Zuber Estate), are mature, deeply rooted plantings able to deliver fruit of exceptional intensity and balance. With its topsoil sluiced away in the gold rush of the mid 1800s, Pink Cliffs crops especially mean yields of deeply scented aromas and mature tannins from its exposed bed of Pre-Cambrian rock. There’s some alluvial wash remaining over the red dirt of the One Eye vineyard, and the concentration it can produce is extraordinary. The Shadowfax Pink Cliffs Shiraz 2001 (18.8, drink 2009-2013) is deeply spiced and perfumed, with light leathery and violet-like aromas above a deep core of blackberry and cassis-like fruit. It presents tremendous length of spicy, dark and savoury flavour and has easily soaked up some pretty classy, fine-grained French cooperage. There’s great drive of small dark fruit, as the wine culminates in a powerful, fine and firm finish of lingering savoury flavour. The wine retails around $70 ($65 at cellar door), with a total make of only 140 dozen. It’s a chunkier, riper and blockier wine that simply demands time in the bottle, but the One Eye Shiraz 2001 (17.4, drink 2009-2013) will certainly last the distance. While its maker, Matt Harrop, believes 2001 to be the least-stressed of the three vintages of Heathcote fruit he has made (the others being 2002 and 2003), stress does reveal itself in some slightly cooked and prune/tar-like flavours. There’s also more overt mint/menthol character than seen with the Pink Cliffs wine, but it should develop more softness and charm with time. This wine also retails around $70 ($65 at cellar door), with a total make of 420 dozen. If you’re interested in robust, long-living Australian shiraz that isn’t made according to the Parker specs, do try to locate the 2001 Pink Cliffs. I’ve little doubt that with a return to normal seasonality and climate, and with several years of better vineyard management behind them, that these vineyards will produce wines of an even higher standard than their 2001 releases (the One Eye vineyard especially), and that these two sites may yet become as well known as some of the key individual shiraz blocks in this potentially outstanding region.
