2022 Murdoch Hill Orion Syrah

98 POINTS

Campbell Mattinson - Halliday Wine Companion

It's not often that such a detailed, delicate wine also comes with such depth. Indeed, this is a wine of gravitas. It's tight, smoky, ripped with mescal-like notes, peppery and just generally savoury, but there's also a gorgeous purr of berried fruit, ripe and settled. Along with all those spicy treble notes there's a good pound of mid-range bass. We're in classic beauty territory, balanced and complete. Give this wine some air; it needs it. And prepare to be mesmerised.

95 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.

95 POINTS

Ned Goodwin - JamesSuckling.com

This is exceptional cool climate syrah, reeling off kelp, black cherries, tapenade, cloves and violets across a long line of flavor, measured intensity and sumptuous tannins, almost sooty and rock-face mineral of feel. Mid-weighted and savory, albeit, with plenty of power. A clench of reduction at the finish to give it just a little more tension. A wine for Northern Rhone lovers seeking a different form of transcendence.

95 POINTS

Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate

The 2022 Orion Syrah is a little reductive upon opening, but this quickly gives way to plum blossom and gravel, blood and roses, black cherry and dark chocolate. In the mouth, the wine gives us all of this; it holds nothing back and offers sheets of nori, sun-dried kelp, tobacco, black earth and brick dust alongside. I love the intensity and conviction of this wine; it's dark without being heavy, and intense and sapid without being overblown or opulent. It's lean, spicy and exotic, a cool wine. 13% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.

94 POINTS

Mike Bennie - The Wine Front

From Oakbank and the stand alone prestige syrah from Murdoch Hill. Best of best and small release of wine too. I’ve seen the wine prior and admired it greatly. For this tasting, on day one I saw a sweetness, maltiness and ripeness that didn’t quite figure with my assumption of the wine, that can happen, though today on the bench, day two, it’s much more settled into its groove with white pepper, herbal elements and game meat qualities soaring through. It’s even, supple, shaped with lithe tannins, red cherry, rose hip tea amongst those previously mentioned savoury elements. You get the sense of liquid spice overall, a slip of green stemmy character well judged underlying. Beautiful wine, though it sits in a more opulent tone.