100 POINTS
Jane Anson - Inside Bordeaux
Inky plum colour, the deepest of the Henschke single vineyard lineup for this iconic wine. Hang out with the aromatics before even heading in for a sip, because they are beautiful, with a hit of star anise, fennel and white pepper. On the palate, you get rosebud, peony, blackberry, redcurrant and slate, all revving up and lifting off. This just tingles with fine tannins and keeps you fully engaged.
100 POINTS
Andrew Caillard MW - The Vintage Journal
Beautifully balanced with voluminous blackberry, mulberry, elderberry roasted chestnut flavours, lovely fine grained and loose knit tannins, superb volume, and integrated acidity. Finishes firm and minerally long. A superb young wine. Destined to become a classic vintage.
99 POINTS
Zekun Shuai - JamesSuckling.com
A superb and harmonious Hill of Grace with wonderful complexity on the nose that keeps bringing you back to the glass. Minty blueberries, red berries and some blackberries. Heather and violets with beautifully integrated spices of peppercorn and five spice. Graphite, salt chocolate and cigar box, too. Intense, lush and concentrated. This is barely full-bodied but the concentration is simply effortless and the flavors grow on the palate. Super silky and svelte tannins glide through the even and cohesive palate. Persistent finish, lasting for more than two minutes. Let it breathe if you decide to open it now, but it will sleep well in your cellar, too.
99 POINTS
Tina Gellie - Decanter
The 60th anniversary of Australia's most famous single-vineyard wine, whose oldest contributing patch – the 0.56ha Grandfathers – was planted an incredible 160 years ago. There can't be many wines whose inaugural vintage came from 100-year-old vines! As always, it's a powerful, muscular wine built for the long haul, showcasing silky but structured tannins, fresh acidity, and concentrated, complex yet graceful flavours of ripe blackberry and boysenberry, lighter red and blue fruits, earthy beetroot, peppery cured meat and an exotic, herbal incense note. Named for the Gnadenberg Lutheran church which stands opposite the vineyard, itself named for the region in Silesia from which Johann Christian Henschke emigrated in 1841.
99 POINTS
James Halliday - The Australian
Matured in mainly French oak (20% new) for 18 months. It opens with gloriously heady scents of wild herbs, spice and pepper, thence flawlessly balanced dark berry fruits, velvet tannins and quicksilver acidity. It’s not often a red wine with a 30-plus-year future is ready for consumption from day one.
99 POINTS
Huon Hooke - The Real Review
Deep red colour with tints of purple and black, less bright than the Hill of Roses, the bouquet more earthbound, more terrestrial at first, with fresh-turned earth and charred oak aromas leading, an echo of the eucalypt forest on a hot day too, while the palate is very powerful, firmly structured and solidly built, with abundant firm tannins and a slight alcohol afterglow. There is tremendous intensity, very full body and amazing horsepower. With time in the glass the trademark dried-herb notes arise, sage and oregano, with traces of black pepper and clove as well, the palate bursting with richness, a deep core of sweet fruit and a tremendously long follow-through, redolent of ironstone. A big wine for this vineyard, with bold, drying but supple tannins and great authority. (60th anniversary release; 57th vintage)
99 POINTS
Dave Brookes - Halliday Wine Companion
The 60th anniversary of what is widely considered Australia's finest single-vineyard wine. Sometimes you've got to pinch yourself and ponder what a lucky existence this wine hack stuff is, sitting here in the Henschke cellar door having just tasted 26 vintages of Hill of Grace spanning back to 1958. Grace by name, grace by nature, it is an elegant, beautiful wine, tannin–acid architecture on point, the fruit depth is just stunning, dotted with five-spice, sage, pepper, charcuterie, crushed quartz and the most lovely, kinetic tannin structure. Finishes with great sustain, harmony and grace. Voluminous and complex, with amazing fruit density and just a complete wine. A classic!
98 POINTS
Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate
The Hill of Grace vineyard, in Eden Valley, comprises 13 separate blocks, six of which feed into the Hill of Grace Shiraz. The oldest block (0.56 hectares), known as "Grandfathers," was planted around 1860. The other blocks were planted in 1910 (0.33 hectares), 1951 (1.08 hectares), 1952 (0.7 hectares), 1956 (0.88 hectares) and 1965 (0.57 hectares). The 2018 Hill of Grace Shiraz was matured in a combination of new (20%) and seasoned (80%) oak hogsheads (83% French, 17% American) for 18 months prior to blending and bottling. On the nose, the 2018 vintage assists this wine in speaking clearly of its regional location: raspberry and licorice, coal dust, black tea and tobacco leaf. There are inflections of black truffle and bone broth, which always seem to emerge, however the wine is brighter and more focused than I have seen. It offers a beautiful, svelte display of fruit and tannin, with all things in harmony in the mouth. This is very long, as we would expect from the pedigree of this wine and the vineyard. It is concentrated and intense, sinewy, elegant and powerful—a wine for the future generation.
