97 POINTS
Toni Paterson MW - Halliday Wine Companion
The grapes, sourced from the 1880 plantings (block MP-01), were picked in three passes to ensure perfect ripeness. It is an incredibly intense wine with a definitive dark fruit profile, featuring ripe mulberry, plum conserve and dried fig tones. The palate is generous and expansive and, despite being laden with sweet fruit, it finishes with freshness. The tannins are exceptionally well integrated, making it surprisingly approachable now while simultaneously possessing the strength to age for decades. The sheer intensity of the dark fruit is its hallmark, culminating in an explosive finale of flavour on the close.
97 POINTS
Mike Bennie - The Wine Front
Amazing to think that Maurice O’Shea was using 40 to 50 year old vines by the time he got around to this vineyard. Now we get it at 140-plus years, or winemaker Adrian Sparks does.
MB: Chewy, chunky, rich and dense. A potent and deeply scented and flavoured wine, robust in sandy tannin, vivid in purple and black berry fruitiness, forest floor, gum leaf, a touch or stewed rhubarb, clove, black olive, dark chocolate. A sweetness ebbs and flows. It does all this with control, however, a sheath of fine, suede tannin. Multi-dimensional. Proper stuff here, an old school, good school idiom, nailed so well. 97+ points.
KS: Painted in shades of black and blue fruit. A smidge of caramel oak comes first, nutmeg then figs, aniseed, violet and blue plum. It’s clear from the first sip that this needs a lot of time to unfurl, in the glass, in the bottle… Dark slate smooth texture, feathery almost, bloody, salty, very fine velvety tannins, tight, yes, all at once, carrying flavour detail long and in a savoury manner. English Breakfast tea perfume lingering long in the aftertaste. Elegant and deeply satisfying. Stunning wine. 97 points
GW: Deep, dark, liquorice and iodine, still has perfume though. Medium to full-bodied, a powerhouse of inky Hunter Shiraz, with black and red fruit, ferrous tannin, concentrated, some savoury bits, very long, and what an emphatic statement of old vine Hunter Shiraz in a great vintage it is. 97 points
NB: All the 2023 Mount P wines now come in Bordeaux shaped bottles, though I don’t have a bottle image to hand.
97 POINTS
Erin Larkin - Robert Parker Wine Advocate
I visited the Mount Pleasant vineyards on this trip to Hunter Valley, and I was struck particularly by the Old Hill site, at the relatively slim girth of the vines for their age. The vineyard site is atop a hill and, in being so, exposed to the elements, yet it is also sheltered by the Brokenback range beyond. "We've run the irrigation lines, just in case," says winemaker Adrian Sparks, "but so far, we've never had to turn them on. These old vines are so well regulated." It was super cool to learn that and to see the place for myself.
The 2023 1880 Old Hill Vineyard Shiraz is gravelly and spicy, with a sway of earthy tannins that run like water through a stream across the palate. The fruit that is shaped by those tannins is an exercise in fine layering: black cherry, raspberry, strawberry, blood plum, garden roses and sumac. This is a super, super wine. The weightless density of the old-vine fruit is on show here. The wine is possessed of a creaminess on the palate; this harmonizes well with the red fruit and emphasizes the freshness. This is so impressive and strongly recommended for seeking out. This will drink well now but will also age beautifully for decades to come. It gets an emphatic "yes" from me. 14% alcohol, sealed under screw cap.
