2020 Hickinbotham Clarendon The Peake Cabernet Shiraz

97 POINTS

Ned Goodwin - Halliday's Wine Companion

Sourced from the contoured quilt of estate vines, a confluence of silts, loams and ferrous outcrops. A traditional blend of the finest performing blocks and best barrels (50% new). A nose tingling with a visceral energy, such is the mineral-clad spine to this wine. Rich and powerful, to be sure, as the sweetness of shiraz and its blue-fruit aspersions meander across cabernet's bones of finely tuned tannins, dried herb and cedar-oak cladding. Yet the overall effect is one of umami warmth, savoury depth and immense potential. This is an iconic wine and deservedly so.

94 POINTS

Angus Hughson - Vinous

A fascinating Cabernet/Shiraz blend, the 2020 The Peake comes from some of the highest vineyards in McLaren Vale. This wine offers excellent purity with blackberry, cassis and clove-scented fruits backed by a generous serving of high-quality oak. A beautifully vibrant palate follows, radiating with dark berry fruits that are kept in check by manicured tannins and deliver a long, flowing finish.

93 POINTS

Christina Pickard - Wine Enthusiast

An almost 50-50 blend of Cab and Shiraz, this is a big but balanced and perfumed bottling with heady aromas of blueberry and blackberry preserves, savory spice and licorice. There's a charred veg nuance, like the pan scrapings of a vegetable roast, with a subtle coating of sweet toasty oak. The rich palate is buoyed by crunchy acidity and framed in powerful but fine, talc-like tannins. Oak is better tucked here. This is a polished, mouthcoating Cab that needs serious protein if drinking now, but that should cellar until 2040 or longer.