2023 Dormilona Clayface Shiraz

95 POINTS

Jane Faulkner - Halliday Wine Companion

The inaugural release will join chardonnay, chenin Blanc and cabernet sauvignon in the Clayface range (which is always made and aged in amphora). What a welcoming drink with its bright purple, dark red hue matched to lovely aromas and flavours with everything in balance. Satsuma plums and redcurrants, warm earth, black olive tapenade and loads of spices from nutmeg, sumac to a whiff of black pepper. Barely mid-weighted yet buoyant with fine, sandy tannins plus an intriguing oyster shell/iodine character. Given its youth, let this open in the glass or decant. Either way, a delicious drink in anyone’s book.

93 POINTS

Mike Bennie - The Wine Front

A new one for Dormilona. The shiraz comes from their home vineyard in Yungarra, Margaret River. Fruit is sent to ferment on skins for three weeks in clay amphora, pressed and sent back for three months then bottled. Brooding, dark colour in the glass with a little shimmer of purple. It lurks and growls like that. The perfume a fog of black olive, blackcurrant jubes, mulberry jam and sea spray with faint whiffs of bay leaf and sarsaparilla. The palate slippery then finds a grippy chew of terracotta-earthy tannin – lots of concentration of flavour but not a heaviness, a briny saline acid profile perky in all that. Curious like that and lip-smacking satisfying in its way. A sense of vitality and freshness rolls through. It feels very youthful, a bit like it needs to relax a little, is the gist, though it is also very pleasing. It will improve with some time to settle and hang out too.