Damn good for $22.
When Jim Barry first purchased the Lodge Hill property, his intention was to devote the entire area to white grapes. While Jim was conducting a soil analysis, he recognised his good fortune, discovering a very different soil profile on a small north-facing slope. Warmer than the rest of the property, Jim decided it was the perfect place for premium Shiraz vines. His foresight lead to great triumph just before Jim Barry’s death, when Lodge Hill was awarded Best International Shiraz at the prestigious International Wine Challenge in London.
Jim Barry Wines draws some of the Clare Valley's most excellent Shiraz fruit from an august repertoire of mature vineyards. Lodge Hill itself is something quite special. It isn’t just the climate and aspect that distinguishes this vineyard, the terroir plays a major role. The soils here consist of forty to fifty centimetres of rich, chocolatey loam over almost vertically inclined rock sheets. The growing season is usually quite dry, but the fortuitous layout and composition of the site makes the vines resilient, yielding lavish Shiraz grapes with good flavours and varietal intensity. Following crushing and fermentation, Lodge Hill was aged for thirteen months in a combination of American and French oaks
TASTING NOTES
Lodge Hill shows a brilliant deep and dense ruby/ purple-tinged colour. Ripe blackberry and plum aromatics, sweet mocha and vanilla. Secondary impressions of mintyness and hints of pepper, further nuances of aniseed and of black cherry. The sweet cakey, almost leafy expressions of the wine slip onto the palate, Lodge Hill is graced by it's masculine Shiraz characters. The flavours are dense and complex, black cherry and mulberry fruit, with some subtle spice and vanillin oak. The long, juicy finish is balanced by soft and fine grained tannins. Fully suited to robust red dishes such as beef and kangaroo, Lodge Hill Shiraz is a medium-bodied, corpulent and fleshy wine, it is a delicious red and a terrific value.
Which just about pushes all of my buttons! But if this is "medium bodied," then I clearly don't understand what this means!
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