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Clarendon Hills is the original new breed of cult winery. Its highly controversial Astralis Shiraz polarised Australian wine critical opinion. Few believed it to be the vinous equivalent of the Second Coming; most think the style sailed close to the wind from a technical point of view. Depending on the source, many believed that the wine “would be thrown out of a wine show”. However, controversy is always good when it comes to selling wine. In 1994 the influential US writer Robert Parker Jr discovered Astralis, immediately putting the cat amongst the pigeons.
The wine immediately captured the attention of a generation of fine wine lovers, catapulting Clarendon Hills to fame and leaving the industry gob-smacked. Asian collectors claimed it as one of their ‘first growths’ in the same way they did Le Pin and Valandraud. By the 1998 vintage, Clarendon Hills has found a strong place in the ultra-fine wine firmament. Plush, exotic and massively structured, Astralis has in reality yet to prove itself on the secondary market, although it has attracted serious interest from collectors for five years now. No doubt, much of the small production is headed for the US and Asia. Clarendon Hills has expanded its portfolio of single vineyard wines, all derived from 30 to 75-year-old dry grown vines, from the Clarendon, Blewitt Springs and Kangarilla sub-regions. Clarendon Hills makes a point of highlighting the soil types of each vineyard. Astralis and the Piggott Range Shirazes derive from a mixture of clay, ironstone and gravelly soils. Brookman Shiraz comes off a complex soil profile of sand, gravel ironstone and clay. The Hickinbotham vineyard is planted on hard clay and ironstone in the Onkaparinga Valley and the Piggott Range on solid rock. The Liandra Shiraz is interesting, particularly the 1998. Again, it is too early to judge its potential. The Grenache-based wines are highly alcoholic, but have heaps of fruit definition and flavour. The Sandown Cabernet Sauvignon is promising.
Roman Bratasiuk (pictured), once seen as a marauder, should more fairly be seen as a pathfinder. He has taken the idea of a distinguished vineyard site to the nth degree, enhanced the reputation of McLaren Vale in the process and inspired a whole generation of young winemakers to follow their hearts rather than be constricted by the contemporary winemaking paradigm.
Andrew Caillard MW
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