Jim Barry The Armagh Shiraz 2017
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Robert
Parker - Decanter
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James
Suckling
Product Details
Your Rating
Somm Note
Winemaker Notes
A lovely, concentrated wine, with aromas of mulberry, sarsaparilla and vanilla entwined with sage and violet notes. Intense flavors of elderberries, plum, sage and five spice. The palate is medium bodied with a flow of purple fruit and fine sandy tannins. A wine of great complexity built to develop through the ages.
Professional Ratings
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Robert Parker's Wine Advocate
The 2017 The Armagh Shiraz is really hitting its meaty straps at five years of age (in 2022). It has hoisin, salami, tobacco leaf and five spice in preponderance and shows a level of concentration in the mouth that aligns it with all of our lofty expectations of this vineyard. At 13.8% alcohol, it defies its muscular reputation and instead delivers us a medium-bodied, incredibly complex wine of poise and stature. Drink it from now and for the next 20 years with ease.
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Decanter
Such incredible perfume and florality from this standout Shiraz, so expressive and captivating, filled with roses and violets alongside cherries and plum fruit, milk chocolate and some sage notes. Medium-bodied on the palate but it’s the texture and overall presence of the wine in the mouth that gives this star quality. Tannins are fine and seductive cashmere-like, edged with fruit intensity and spicy sides. This has a good energy to it, mouthwatering and pulsing with life with a long finish and lift at the end. Precision and power - built to last.
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James Suckling
This is a cooler vintage for Armagh and has vibrant blueberries, violets and floral spices with a redder-fruit spectrum leading the nose. The palate has a lithe, juicy feel and the oak sits in a gently creamy layer of redder plum and berry flavors. An elegant, athletic Armagh and one that trades on acidity and more medium-weight tannin structure. Try from 2025.
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Marked by an unmistakable deep purple hue and savory aromatics, Syrah makes an intense, powerful and often age-worthy red. Native to the Northern Rhône, Syrah achieves its maximum potential in the steep village of Hermitage and plays an important component in the Red Rhône Blends of the south, adding color and structure to Grenache and Mourvèdre. Syrah is the most widely planted grape of Australia and is important in California and Washington. Sommelier Secret—Such a synergy these three create together, the Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre trio often takes on the shorthand term, “GSM.”
The Clare Valley is actually a series of narrow north to south valleys, each with a different soil type and slightly different weather patterns along their stretch. In the southern heartland between Watervale and Auburn, there is mainly a crumbled, red clay loam soil called terra rossa and cool breezes come in from Gulf St. Vincent. A few miles north, in Polish Hill, is soft, red loam over clay; westerlies blowing in from the Spencer Gulf influece this area's climate.
The differences in soil, elevation, degree of slope and weather enable the region to produce some of Australia’s finest, aromatic, spicy and lime-pithy Rieslings, as well as excellent Shiraz, Cabernet Sauvignon and Malbec with ripe plummy fruit, good acid and big structure.
Clare Valley is an isolated farming country with a continental climate known for its warm and sunny days, followed by cool nights—perfect for wine grapes’ development of sugar and phenolic ripeness in conjunction with notable acidity levels.