Head The Brunette Shiraz 2021

Alex Head has long targeted becoming a serious maker of single-site Barossa wines from Rhône Valley varieties, with access to a number of significant old vine sites in Eden Valley and on the Barossa floor. Recent seasons have seen some spectacular improvement. I enjoy the fact that Head is able to reflect both the regional origins and Rhône-inspired stylistic cues in a fashion that is entirely effortless and very persuasive. The Blonde Shiraz takes its name from the limestone substratum beneath a 1.5 hectare site near Stonewell and represents outstanding value for money. The contrasting wine to this, The Brunette Shiraz, viz. Côte-Rôtie, is sourced from the darker ironstone and red-brown clays of a site at Moppa. Head fashions each into wines of remarkable elegance and subtlety, with The Blonde revealing a spectrum that lies within a red fruit/quince/apricot range, while The Brunette tends to sport more of a darker profile: cassis, mulberry and blood plum. The slightly more uptown The Redhead comes from a slope just 100 metres inside the Eden Valley region, with a soil profile akin to that of Moppa and Ebenezer. As a group, the wines are pure joy. They point strongly towards a sophisticated, international expression of shiraz that shows that despite concerns over climate, there is a valid and very bright future for Barossa shiraz.