Orlando Wyndham is shortly to release the 1998 vintage of its premier shiraz, the Jacob’s Creek Centenary Hill Shiraz. This wine, which was recently added to the Jacob’s Creek range, made its debut with a sumptuous but extremely elegant wine from 1994. While the 1997 vintage was a very competent effort from a challenging vintage, there is considerable anticipation over the forthcoming 1998 wine. Having tasted the wine again very recently, as part of a significant tasting of Orlando Wyndham wines, my view is that in this particular vintage, the company’s winemakers made the same mistake as did countless other Australians during that potentially brilliant but often disappointing vintage. Simply put, the grapes are over-ripened, which is a particular crime in the Lyndoch area within the Barossa, since its best wines are usually of a finer and more elegant style when compared to much of the Barossa at large. Faced by a wine that had lost much of its fruit sweetness, the winemakers then made another not altogether unique mistake, by attempting to compensate by imparting an excessive degree of highly toasted oak influence into the wine. As a result, it falls well short of expectation and potential. The news, however, is not entirely bad. A preview of the 2002 Centenary Hill suggests it stands easily amongst the best South Australian wines of the season. It offers all the Barossa spice, intensity and mouthfilling qualities you could ever want, but delivers them in a charmingly elegant and fine-grained fashion. It’s an extraordinary wine, and one that will outlive most 1998 releases by at least a single decade. For my recent tasting notes of these wines, please click below: Jacob’s Creek Centenary Hill Shiraz 1998 Jacob’s Creek Centenary Hill Shiraz 2002
