Clonakilla Hilltops Shiraz 2017 ~ Southern Highlands NSW Australia

94/100 The Wine Front
92/100 CellarTracker
92/100 Huon Hooke
94/100 James Halliday (2016 Vintage)
93/100 The Wine Front (2016 Vintage)

Huon Hooke "Medium to deep red/purple colour, with a reserved but spicy bouquet showing abundant herbs and spices. An elegant, medium to full-bodied shiraz with cool spiciness and lots of style. Fine grained, mild tannins and lovely balance. It drinks well already."

Campbell Mattinson "I’ve liked a great many of the previous releases of this wine but this is my favourite of the lot. It’s a ripper. Balanced, well fruited, spice-laden, perfumed, floral and then sweetly exotic. It smells and tastes beautiful, and is so finely etched with tannin; It’s a ripper. It has everything exactly where you’d like it to be. I’d send a case of this straight into the pool room but I’d like my stash kept a lot closer to me than that and, besides, I don’t have a pool room anyway. Buy."

Tyson Stelzer "2017 was a beautifully medium-bodied season in Hilltops, giving birth to a wine that captures the fragrant and spicy personality of shiraz with great detail. It entices with rose hip and white pepper over a core of red cherries and greengage plums but it’s the lingering finish that really sets it apart, structured with magnificent, finely textured tannins."

This wine is produced from five vineyards in the Hilltops District in New South Wales. Clonakilla is an Australian winery based in the Canberra wine region of Murrumbateman, New South Wales. Clonakilla was the first commercial winery to open in the region and founder John Kirk is often referred to as the "father" of the wine industry in the area. Clonakilla, which translates as "meadow of the church", are most famous for their Shiraz-Viognier. James Halliday describes it as paving "the way for numerous others to follow" and yet that it "remains the icon".

Hilltops is an Australian wine region of southern New South Wales, lying 80 miles (130km) north-west of Canberra. One of Australia's youngest wine regions, it is centered around the towns of Boorowa, Young and Harden, and the evocatively titled village of Wombat. The cool climate conditions here allow for the production of more elegant styles, notably of Chardonnay and Semillon for whites and Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon for reds. The climate is the result not only of Hilltops' distance from the Pacific coast (which brings about the cooler nights and winters), but also of its increased altitude. Almost all Hilltops vineyards are located above 1475ft (450m).