98 POINTS
Toni Paterson MW - Halliday Wine Companion
Maurice O'Shea is the flagship blend of the best parcels from the finest vineyards of the Mount Pleasant estate. For this vintage, the vineyards included the 1880 vines of Old Hill and the Rosehill 1946 vines, with all grapes hand picked, destemmed and sorted, leaving the whole berries to soak before fermentation. The result is a stylish, medium-weight shiraz with incredible flavour intensity and an inherent lightness and energy. Beautifully supple, it bursts with warm strawberry fruit, enhanced by nuanced, fragrant oak. The mid-palate has impressive weight, while the intense, succulent flavours on the finish are captivating and memorable. Though it will cellar for decades, its remarkable approachability makes it hard to resist opening now.
98 POINTS
Shanteh Wale - Winepilot
Wow, just wow. You know the blending bench has had tireless hours of tasting and conversation for this wine. The icon, the flagship, the cumulation of vintage and pedigree. It is a work of art, in every sense, and captures the magic of Mount Pleasant. Waves and curls of raspberry puree, rosehip and Alpine strawberry. A hint of Kirsch and bilberry. An undeniable sandy clay earthiness is tangible in each sip followed by white pepper, billy tea tannins and carried by eloquent and effortless acidity. It’s seamless to be quite frank and hard to imagine how the $ figure covers it. This will make you proud to be living in the state of New South Wales let alone the continent. At an early pre release this is drinking stonkingly well and will continue to evolve in ways the mind can only imagine. A magical mystical vintage of Maurice O’Shea!
96 POINTS
Campbell Mattinson - The Wine Front
GW and MB have already reviewed this, here. In a first-ever for TWF, we’re now effectively going to do a quadruple-take or, at least, 2x double-takes. KS: On the back of my note on this wine from a year ago and the recent reviews from GW and MB, I simply think this wine needs time. Either in the bottle or in a decanter. I just want to say, don’t dismiss it yet or at least don’t dismiss it on the first day. It drinks well on the third day. Maybe it’s introverted and needs time to get comfortable and open up? The perfume is distinctly that of Syrah but the flavours are somewhat understated and speak of Pinot Noir. On the first day, this wine had bacon fat and potpourri leaping out, with roasted meat and smoked charcutery. On the second and third day, this evolved into rose perfume, wet granite, touch of petrichore, new-fresh leather. The fruit is ripe and red-black on the nose, the likes of boysenberry with mulberry. But the palate has it more on the strawberry and raspberry side of things, with dark chocolate and salt. I wrote on the minerality front before, that it has broken seashells, iodine-type of drive and I can still see it very clearly. Tannins are silty and carry flavour with focus evenly towards a long finish. It all builds up with time into bloody meat and iron(more.(more...)
96 POINTS
Campbell Mattinson - The Wine Front
GW and MB have already reviewed this, here. In a first-ever for TWF, we’re now effectively going to do a quadruple-take or, at least, 2x double-takes. KS: On the back of my note on this wine from a year ago and the recent reviews from GW and MB, I simply think this wine needs time. Either in the bottle or in a decanter. I just want to say, don’t dismiss it yet or at least don’t dismiss it on the first day. It drinks well on the third day. Maybe it’s introverted and needs time to get comfortable and open up? The perfume is distinctly that of Syrah but the flavours are somewhat understated and speak of Pinot Noir. On the first day, this wine had bacon fat and potpourri leaping out, with roasted meat and smoked charcutery. On the second and third day, this evolved into rose perfume, wet granite, touch of petrichore, new-fresh leather. The fruit is ripe and red-black on the nose, the likes of boysenberry with mulberry. But the palate has it more on the strawberry and raspberry side of things, with dark chocolate and salt. I wrote on the minerality front before, that it has broken seashells, iodine-type of drive and I can still see it very clearly. Tannins are silty and carry flavour with focus evenly towards a long finish. It all builds up with time into bloody meat and iron and black pepper becoming more and more Syrah again. This is all very interesting. I’d be at the same level of 96/96+ points. What I wrote a year ago: Dense perfume of cherries and blackberries, black pepper, coffee, black tea, wet tea leaves chew, flavour wrapped in iodine electric feel, almost oyster shell type of minerality. Very youthful, I want to say light but tightly packed flavour, strawberry juice, it keeps on giving with air, orange peel and more strawberry, love that oyster shell wrap, flavour’s mostly packed in mid-palate. 96+ points CM: I’ve looked at two bottles of this, a few days apart. Both looked awkward on opening. The next day was a different matter but not so much in flavour as in flow and overall harmony. It’s a meaty, smoky wine with floral inputs, iodine notes, customary cherry-leather drivers and elongated tannin. Even when this wine has been opened for three or four days the char of the oak is still clear, possibly too clear, though it is at the same time complementary to the overall flavour profile of the wine. Given that all four of us have taken a go at describing this wine I probably don’t need to keep adding descriptors, so I’ll finish by saying: I’m in Kasia’s camp here. I think this wine is excellent. 95 points.
92 POINTS
Mike Bennie - The Wine Front
Here we go, as they say. MB: It’s compact and trim, tightly bound in a web of smoked paprika, clove, mahogany and new leather with a core of dried cranberry, just-ripe cherry, touches of vanilla cream and layered-in hazelnut that is dashed with sweet spice. It feels primped and preened, finessed by winemaking and polished to a shiny sheen, and in that perhaps missing some energy of some Mt P releases, but you can sit back and definitely admire the sense of fanciness the wine delivers. Freshness and old vine charm of many Mt P releases seem to falter in this label, at times, but if fancy, fine wine paradigm wine is an interest, then there’s sense in drinking here. 92 points, 2025-2040 GW: I tasted this last year with the other 2023 releases, and I thought I’d wait till it was released, because I wasn’t as enthusiastic about this wine as I was the others. Raspberry, mulberry, toasted hazelnut, iodine and spice. It’s medium-bodied, sits a little flat in the palate, and seems lacking in concentration and old vine goodness compared to the other offerings from Mount P in 2023. It has a light crunch to acidity, modest grainy tannin, and a finish of solid length. It’s a good wine, but really, it lacks excitement and x-factor. Tastes a bit dried out. Maybe it’ll come good. Hard to say. 91 points.
92 POINTS
Mike Bennie - The Wine Front
Here we go, as they say. MB: It’s compact and trim, tightly bound in a web of smoked paprika, clove, mahogany and new leather with a core of dried cranberry, just-ripe cherry, touches of vanilla cream and layered-in hazelnut that is dashed with sweet spice. It feels primped and preened, finessed by winemaking and polished to a shiny sheen, and in that perhaps missing some energy of some Mt P releases, but you can sit back and definitely admire the sense of fanciness the wine delivers. Freshness and old vine charm of many Mt P releases seem to falter in this label, at times, but if fancy, fine wine paradigm wine is an interest, then there’s sense in drinking here. 92 points, 2025-2040 GW: I tasted this last year with the other 2023 releases, and I thought I’d wait till it was released, because I wasn’t as enthusiastic about this wine as I was the others. Raspberry, mulberry, toasted hazelnut, iodine and spice. It’s medium-bodied, sits a little flat in the palate, and seems lacking in concentration and old vine goodness compared to the other offerings from Mount P in 2023. It has a light crunch to acidity, modest grainy tannin, and a finish of solid length. It’s a good wine, but really, it lacks excitement and x-factor. Tastes a bit dried out. Maybe it’ll come good. Hard to s(more...)
