One of Australia's great red wines, the 2019 Maurice O'Shea Shiraz is concentrated and intense. It's hard to imagine how so much flavor could be packed into just one glass. And never mind that; I tasted a 2014 the other week (not old by any stretch of the imagination), and it had not moved an inch from inception, which bodes well for long-term cellaring. You get roasted lamb crust (blood, fat, rosemary, pepper, etc.), salted pomegranate, clove bud, crushed rocks, nutmeg and sandalwood. RP
The hue and depth is similar to that of the Old Paddock & Old Hill and Rosehill wines, and its bouquet is not radically different, but one sip and you realise that however great the OP & OH is, this wine is on another level again. Swallowing wines in a day's tasting is a mortal sin, and I have sinned with this, so seductive and entrancing is it's all achieved by a medium-bodied wine with an alcohol of only 13.7% It has utterly perfect balance, great intensity, extreme length and a magnificent lineage. JH
$ 1,388
Mount Pleasant Maurice O’Shea Shiraz 2014
JH
99
Arguably, one of the greatest red vintages in living memory', says Mount Pleasant. The flagship wine. Destemmed and crushed, short cold soak, open-fermented, matured in large format French oak (30% new) for 18 months. Has the gently throbbing power of a Rolls Royce; superb, deep crimson-purple hue, itself rare in the Hunter Valley. Countless layers of black fruits have absorbed the oak and put the undoubted tannins into limbo land. O'Shea would have died a happy man had this been his last wine. Dissecting it now is an academic exercise at best, so great is its future. This is as close to a 100-year potential as you are ever likely to find. JH