In April 2013 Diana Genders had a special visitor of Philip White. Philip writes for a local publication “Indaily” and blog site “Drinkster“. Whilst Philip was at Genders he did us the honour of rating our 2005 Shiraz at 95+++ points.
RARE TREASURES FROM McLAREN VALE
Genders McLaren Park McLaren Vale Shiraz 200514.8% alcohol; screw cap; 95+++ points
Made from thirteen rows of a 1991 planting of an unknown clone of Shiraz in the tiny — 1.1 ha.– North Block below Chalk Hill, this wine comes from the geographical heart of McLaren Vale, and yet bears little, if any, resemblance to its rivals, whether they’re from tiny or vast wineries. Most 2005 Vales Shiraz is dying now; this baby’s hardly talking. It’s probably the best 2005 Vales red I’ve seen. The wine is certainly built for the long haul: it’s as tight and precise as a kettle drum, showing no fat or jam or gloop whatsoever. Thirty months of French oak has given it a splinter of walnut forest, but this gradually subsides as the wine ever so begrudgingly takes in air. It immediately reminds me of the wines August Clape and family makes from the Cornas vineyard on the edge of the Rhone, but it’s tighter than those, as if it were grown in a much cooler climate. Appropriately, it seems coolly distant at first, but gradually releases alluring insinuations of this or that: licorice, musk, cosmetics, mudcake, confectioner’s sugar, summer dust … primary fruit is the last thing on its mind. Eventually, like after 24 hours, you’ll see reluctant oozes of baby beetroot — borscht with sour cream, really — and gentle, silky mulberry and prune emergent. The palate is lean and compressed, and yet near-prefect in its formation and shape: it just seems to draw out so long and tapering and slender it’s like a gastronomic sabre being withdrawn from its sheath. The texture is very faintly grainy: a vinous Teflon. It has tremendous natural acidity. It will last for decades — four? five? — in the cellar, and needs a good twelve hours in a jug to be best loved in this its infancy. He was crossing varietal boundaries, of course, but I understand what one USA critic meant when he said Genders was the Petrus of Australia, before he took half a vintage of this home with him, for sale at a vast profit. (Château Petrus is currently around $2700 per bottle.)