Excellent Langtons Classification. Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot with the occasional inclusion of Shiraz or Petit Verdot. One of Australia's most revered red wines, vinified from a backbone of superlative fruit grown to the eminent Len Evans and Sharefarmer Vineyards at the heart of Coonawarra's cigar shaped strip of precious Terra rossa soils. Petaluma employs hand pruning and hand picking, foreign practices in Coonawarra, for an enduring red blend that's now an iconic Australian wine and regional benchmark.

The nation's most long lived Merlot, a regional beacon of the varietal since since inaugural vintage of 1990. An assemblage of the best parcels from the distinguished Evans and Sharefarmer Vineyards. Both these mature sites yield a precious harvest of the most outstanding fruit. The palate is full, luscious and rich with loads of black fruits and cedar oak. A fully fleshed, immaculately detailed Merlot of satin textures and the most amazingly affable tannins, mesmerisingly perfumed by the heady notes of creme de cassis, Coonawarra violet, eucalypts and mint.

Excellent Langtons Classification. One of Australia's icon wines, perennially feted and internationally recognized. A highly structured, integrated red that's immense in stature, and always offers long ageing potential.

Predominantly Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot with smaller portions of Shiraz and Malbec. The old vines at Evans Vineyard are hand pruned and hand picked, and are treated as dear old individuals. This is the first use of Shiraz since 1982 and only the second vintage with Malbec, since the first Petaluma Coonawarra vintage in 1979. A wonderful ripe, full flavoured dry red wine to decant and breathe before service. The individual batches were assembled after a total of twenty two months in oak before a light egg white fining and no filtration.

Excellent Langtons Classification. The batches of fruit were kept intentionally small, with further selectivity during the winemaking to ensure only fully ripe barrels were incorporated into the finished Cuvee.

Established by industry doyen Len Evans, the Petaluma vineyards are at the very heart of Coonawarra, invaluable winegrowing terroirs which are infused by the mineral rich terra rosa soils and stimulated by the balmy maritime breezes of the Southern Ocean. A fully Certified Organic Shiraz, picked off vines which have been husbanded to a holistic, environmentally sustainable viticulture, spicy, brooding and engagingly aromatic, a long dry red with elegant velvet tannins, peppery plum fruit characters and piquantly perfumed, cool Coonawarra finish.

The brilliant maritime climes of McLaren Vale yield a richly styled Cabernet wine of penetrating fruit characters and firm but assuaging tannins. The people behind Pertaringa are amongst the most eminent Australian wine industry identities, viticulture on the Pertaringa vineyards however, remains a very hands on affair. Vines are closely managed for trim harvests of small but intensely flavoured Cabernet grapes, a concentration of berry characters in the juices and a measure of solid yet refined tannins within the skins.

Pertaringa are fortuitously positioned at the foothills of Mount Lofty Ranges, the perfect location for grapes, by virtue of a temperate environment and deep clay loam soils. Undercover is a reference to the McLaren Vale tradition in supplying other regions with bespoke parcels of fruit, ultimately to be vinified into some of Australia's most favourite wines. Undercover is an old vine Shiraz, selected from Pertaringa's five decade old vineyard, hand crafted by winemaking supremos Geoff Hardy and Ben Riggs. Undercover is the essence of McLaren Vale Shiraz.

Even the finest Merlot is rarely seen front and centre as a pure varietal wine. Pertaringa manage an endowment of the finest McLaren Vale vineyards and can call on harvests of superior fruit for the construct of an exclusively Merlot wine. Layers of fleshy plum flavour, velvet textures and pliable tannins define the structure and style of Stage Left, essentially a splendid food friendly mode of Merlot, the first choice to accompany quails wrapped and grilled in pancetta or delicately braised game over red wine Jus and pureed parsnip grits.

Pertaringa was established during the early 1980s at the intersection of Rifle Range and Hunt Roads. It was a rough time for the Australian wine industry and growers were ripping up their vineyards, some of them old and invaluable, to qualify for government grants. Pertaringa founder Geoff Hardy came from a long line of McLaren Vale winemakers and welcomed the challenge. Hunt & Rifle is a stately Cabernet wine of beautifully fragrant fruit characters and refined, graceful tannins, a suitable match to braised beef cheek sous glaze or succulent sticky pork.

The signs came very early that Pertaringa was growing an exceptional quality of Shiraz, trading much of their early vintages to Hardy Wines. Over The Top is a reference to the Pertaringa pursuit of excellence, delivering a taste of McLaren Vale to the enthusiast in demand of superior Shiraz. Pertaringa outperforms many national flagship wines at international competitions, a favourite of Qantas Business Class, the Shiraz of choice to serve alongside trois couleurs pepper steak or seared Wagyu.

Just a few minutes southwest of the great estates at Vacqueyras and Chateauneuf du Pape lies Costieres de Nîmes. The Greeks planted one of France's very first vineyards here milenia ago. Julius Caesar's Egypt campaign veterans took up the viticulture some centuries later, labelling their stocks of locally made wine with the stamp of a crocodile. Today's Costieres de Nîmes makes Shiraz Grenache of such elegance and style, so akin to her famous siblings to the east, that they have been conscripted under the Origine Contrôlee of Cotes du Rhône.

Pepperjack, by the illustrious House of Saltram, has grown to be a cult favourite for enthusiasts of profound yet approachable Shiraz. The Pepperjack team are conscious of modern tastes and are creating wines for aspirants of great gastronomy and better beef. Fruit is sourced from superb vineyards yielding grapes with generous fruit character, definitive varietal flavour, fine tannin structure and an innate affinity to steak. The pick of McLaren Vale's harvests have been assembled into an intense style of Shiraz to balance the richness of juicy Scotch Fillet.

So popular are the wines of Pepperjack, that the label hosts its own society of dedicated enthusiasts. This devout cohort of zealots, converges at bespoke venues to discuss matters Pepperjack, they dine on prime beef and imbibe in their cherished libation. Established by one of the nation's most eminent winemakers (Nigel Dolan, twice Jimmy Watson and thrice Stodart Trophy), Pepperjack now take the pick of Langhorne Creek Shiraz, for a wine of fantastic minerality and fine chalky tannin, fashioned to flatter and embellish the finest Porterhouse.

Pepperjack delivers the very best attributes of modern Barossa Cabernet, vibrance, structure and elegance. Fruit from vineyards on the Barossa Valley floor contributes body and weight, while sophistication is derived from parcels sourced off the cooler altitudes of Eden Valley.

Strandlines are ancient dunes which mark the retreating oceanfront from what is now Naracoorte Range in Wrattonbully. This unique topography harbours the famed Terra Rossa topsoils over Gambier limestone. The significant value of these soils for viticulture lies in the near perfect drainage they provide, leading to small crops of wonderfully intense fruit. When vintage conditions are considered to be at their optimum, Pepper Tree assemble a wine from their finest barrels of Cabernet Sauvignon and Shiraz to be bottled into the flagship Strandlines.

Pepper Tree have strayed from their wineworks at Pokolbin to secure harvests of Terra Rossa Shiraz which are second to none. The team know from good fruit and have a good eye for terroir, their splendid vines planted to Wrattonbully's Gravels Block grow a superior quality of Shiraz, characterized by controlled power and stealthy tannins. Flavour maps which have been generated for the vineyard demonstrate considerable variance, assisting the team to isolate individual sections for the production of a wine exhibiting generosity and charm.

Wrattonbully makes Merlot of exceptional character and flavour, arguably the finest and most consistent annual yields in Australia. The wines are distinctive for their blueberry, plum and mint character, sound structure and velvet tannins. Pepper Tree's Merlot vines are fortuitously planted to heavier clay soils at the toe of the main Wrattonbully dune, as heavy clays have proved to be the best soils for Merlot in its traditional home of Bordeaux. A soft and rich, profoundly fruit driven Merlot wine with more power and weight of varietal flavour than most.

Pepper Tree are traditionally crafted from choice parcels of fruit which can best display heightened varietal character and a sense of place. Wrattonbully adjoins the famous Coonawarra and shares many of her sister's viticultural endowments. Fashioned to be a true expression of the terroir whence it originates, Pepper Tree is a generously flavoured Cabernet Sauvignon with all the warmth and charm that defines the natural endowments of Wrattonbully's rich Terra rossa soils.

Penny Hill's proprietary red blend, the enduring Australian cépage of Cabernet and Shiraz, softened by the genteel plummyness of Merlot, for a wine which defines all the vinous endowments of McLaren Vale. A fully engrossing palate is supported by showroom oak and the silkiest tannins, brimming with layers of lush fruit flavours in abundance. Merlot delineates the concord, moderating the power of Cabernet and piquancy of Shiraz.

Penny's Hill was declared Australia's Best Boutique Wine in 2006 and Australia's Best Boutique Shiraz in 2007. Following the footsteps of an unbroken cadence in superlative vintage editions, displaying the quality and depth expected from Penny's Hill, Skeleton Key is packed with flavour, deep in colour, beautifully balanced and a wonderful accompaniment to fine dining. Intensity and fine integration set this bellwether label apart from the rest, it displays the consistency and excellent quality for which Penny's Hill Shiraz has become famous.

The Malpas family planted four scant acres of clone D3V14 Merlot vines to an auspicious block of dark, dry Bay of Biscay soils in 1991. The fissures which occur as the soils crack, sever the roots and diminish vigor in the vines, culminating in vintages of the extraordinary intensity and concentration of fruit. Bunches are destemmed, crushed and vinified on skins for a week, followed by a press into seasoned French oak for malolactic and eighteen months maturation. Bright cherry and blueberry fruit, red licorice and savoury spice, supple tannins and soft, lengthy finish.

Penny's Hill was established by a lodge of eminent industry identities, leaders in their field, renowned for their accomplishments in all things McLaren Vale. A superior vineyard wine from the twelve finest rows of Shiraz, planted 1991 to clone 654, at the highest elevations of the original Penny's Hill block. Remarkably pure in its eloquence and expression of terroir, voluptuously proportioned, full bodied and exquisitely balanced, a McLaren Vale icon, the articulation of a sensational vineyard, as crafted by the master winemaking team at Penny's Hill.

From a single block of ancient, pre clonal Grenache vines, painstakingly trained to reduce vigor and increase concentration of flavour in the berries. Grapes are all hand picked and open fermented, gently hand plunged throughout the course of a fortnight, pressed off skins and filled to a selection of well seasoned French oak hogsheads for a year's maturation on sediments. Vibrant cherry and raspberry, anise, savouryness and spice, seductive in its balance and complexity, elegance, supple tannins, old vine Grenache of exceptional generosity and length.

The Edwards are a well established family of agriculturalists with a long history of farming McLaren Vale for generations. Their eponymous road runs along the valley foothills, the land on the north side of the road is now established to fully mature vines which are the source of Cabernet Sauvignon for Penny's Hill. A generously proportioned, single vineyard wine with a real sense of place, articulating the uniqueness of site, enhanced by extended maturation in a good measure of new oak, McLaren Vale Cabernet at its finest.

Planted in 1991 and added to the Penny's Hill estate vineyard group in 1993, Malpas Road is named after the pioneering family who held lands in what was originally referred to as Bay of Biscay. A reference to the relatively infertile cracking, grey black soil upon which the hand tended Shiraz patch does its work. The fissures which occur as the black soils crack apart, sever surplus root structure, a process which lessens vine vigor and enhances the virtue of the grape. Unmistakably McLaren Vale, even more so Penny's Hill.

This enduring flagship wine can boast twenty trophys and over seventy gold medals throughout its illustrious history. Penley Steyning captures and enhances the excellence in first growth Coonawarra Cabernet Sauvignon, highlighted by rich berry tones, superior length and layers of intense flavour, a wine which achieves perfect harmony between massive intensity of fruit, mouth filling grape tannins and elegant acids. The extended time in new French oak is a key factor to the integration and development. Flavour, depth and length dominate the style.

The history of Penley dates back to 1858 when The Phoenix Winemaking and Distilling Company was established at Stepney. During 1888 the company name was changed to Tolley Scott Tolley and remained with the family until 1960. Tolley's great grandson Kym re established T.S.Tolley as Penley in 1988. Phoenix is a reference to the re emergence of Tolley winemaking traditions and enduring Coonawarra vineyards. Dominated by Cabernet fruit characters, bramble and cassis, Phoenix offers a generosity and structure that's distinctly Coonawarra.

A Coonawarra Shiraz of elegance and finesse, Penley's vintages are regularly awarded with prestigious international trophies and accolades, outclassing some of the nation's icon wines. A splendid effort exhibiting generous varietal fruit and spiced pepper, perfumes of good French oak and plenty of flavour. Shiraz has taken well to Coonawarra, where the cooler growing conditions yield a slightly more supple, finer boned style than warmer climes. Balance is a key feature in all Penley wines, fruit, tannins and oak in complete harmomy.

There really was a Thomas Hyland, he was Dr. Christopher Rawson Penfold's son in law. Hyland oversaw the development of what was to become within his lifetime, Australia's first name in wine. Penfold Thomas Hyland honours his passion for wine and entrepreneurial flair. A recent addition to the portfolio, Thomas Hyland is an Adelaide Hills Shiraz with further contribution from good vineyards further afield. A fruit driven, entry level to the Penfold range, accessible and contemporarily styled, underpinned by a touch of new oak to add complexity.

Commemorating the entrepeneurial spirit of Dr. Penfold's son in law. Thomas Hyland's stewardship of Penfold from the late 1800s until 1914 saw the development of what, in his lifetime, became Australia's most famous name in wine. Essentially fruit driven, Thomas Hyland offers a contemporary expression of Cabernet structure and flavour, showing the classic varietal elements of bramble and cedar over fine grained tannins.

Excellent Langtons Classification. St Henri stands out as one of the most internationally successful Australian icon wines, year in and year out, it serves to uphold the integrity and regal nature of the Penfolds brand. Always an expression of the finest South Australian Shiraz without the distraction of oak, a minor component of Cabernet, can in some years be assembled into the final wine, contributing structure, firmer tannins and complexity.