2021 Craggy Range Sophia

95 POINTS

Christina Pickard - Wine Enthusiast

There's an unmistakably minty, dried herbal edge, which, when combined with leafy black currant and fleshy plum, makes for an evocative, winter-warming aroma profile. There's stuffing to the palate, the plummy fruit, graphite and spiced tannins fill the mouth, yet it manages a light breezy feel, too, thanks to a cool edge of acidity.

94 POINTS

James Suckling

A polished red with currant, chocolate and hazelnut aromas and flavors. It’s medium- to full-bodied with a lovely finish. Delicious now but can age. A blend of cabernet franc and merlot.

94 POINTS

Gary Walsh - The Wine Front

Blue and red fruit, iodine, perfume, high quality creamy spicy oak. Medium-bodied, good volume of fruit, but fresh, some tobacco, tannin is fleshy and ripe, and the finish is long. Lovely wine.

94 POINTS

Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate

The 2021 Sophia comprises 77% Merlot and 23% Cabernet Franc and is aromatically thrilling. A completely different beast to the 2020 Sophia, this is balanced, fresh, detailed, precise and elegant. It retains the aromatic garden mint and herbal characters that underpin the purple fruit, but it does it with a finesse and purpose that is most impressive. You get raw cocoa, raspberry, licorice, graphite, blueberries. 14% alcohol, sealed under screw cap. I tasted this wine again the next day and was struck by the finesse of tannins in the mouth. They're totally seamless and fine-boned and a defining characteristic of the wine—almost as much as the fruit flavors. The oak is totally integrated and almost imperceptible.

93 POINTS

Rebecca Gibb MW - Vinous

The 2021 Sophia is a deeply colored, richly perfumed Right Bank-inspired blend with a generosity of fruit yet retains focus and precision. This smooth, mid-weight style achieves a real sense of freshness and elegance despite the unmistakable flavor, sugar (14%) and phenolic ripeness. It is remarkably easy to approach out of the gate with its open fruit, reminiscent of pure blackcurrants, biscuity notes and vanilla, leaving you thinking it's been too long since you last had a slice of blackcurrant cheesecake. This is a grown-up New Zealand red blend that may have the brightness of fruit that makes it more New World rather than Bordeaux, but it has class and integration. The vines yielded a crop of 35hl/ha and spent 17 months aging in French oak barrels, of which 33% were new.