2021 Murdoch Hill Orion Syrah

96 POINTS

Stuart Knox - The Real Review

Deep and dense ruby core with purple glints at the rim. Deeply fragrant with mulberry, nori, and pepper spice aromas. Medium bodied with dark fruits, black slate and nori flavours flowing through a tightly wound core. Tannins are fine-grained but powerful and they ensure the line and length is prodigious. Has many years ahead of it.

96 POINTS

Matt Walls - Decanter

Bright violet and rose, light spicy highlights, liquorice. Very silky, very fine, it caresses the palate. Lovely sense of shape – very svelte and elegant. Fine powdery tannins, just a little unstructured perhaps, but very easy to love. Whispers rather than shouts, but is ripe and has good palate weight. Oak is discrete and very well integrated.

96 POINTS

James Halliday - Halliday Wine Companion

Has excellent colour grading to a vivid purple-crimson rim. The bouquet and palate sing lustily from the same page, with black fruits, spices, dark chocolate, licorice and sandalwood. It's built for the long haul.

95 POINTS

Mike Bennie - The Wine Front

A parcel of fruit from a single plot came through that looked strong from the get-go, and hence this wine was released. Big perfume that echoes with game meat, white pepper, ripe plum, pickled cherry and truffle. Sloshes into the palate with concentration but a laciness, levity, and yet tightens on a web of fine, graphite-laced tannins. Dark plum to taste, smoked paprika, game meat, dried herbs. Serious syrah here, done righteously.

94 POINTS

Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate

The 2021 Orion Syrah is from Oakbank, in the Adelaide Hills, and it is a brooding, dark, "depth of midnight" kind of a wine. There are notes of blackberry, licorice, anise, tobacco and resin. In the mouth, the tannins create a framework within which the fruit is coiled, and it slowly unfurls through the long finish. Defined by tannin and extraordinarily fresh (likely owing to the sensitive picking window, resulting in a finished wine of 13.5% alcohol), this is elegant and spicy untold. Your decision rests now with which premium Syrah you stylistically gravitate toward, between the leafy/spicy/exotic Landau and this dark, galactic Orion. Sealed under screw cap.

92 POINTS

James Suckling

A lovely mix of black and blue fruit on the nose with notes of white pepper, hot stone and clove. Medium- to full-bodied with silky tannins. Savory with rounded texture and a juicy finish.