Generous and plush, with milk chocolate accents to the wild blackberry and huckleberry core, with details of caramel, palo santo, tobacco, sage and red licorice. Gains complexity and intensity on the long, dense and velvety finish. Shiraz. Drink now.\n Producer Information\n Torbreck is a leading wine producer in the Barossa Valley region of Australia, specializing in Shiraz. It is particularly known for its powerful and aromatic flagship RunRig Shiraz (made from 120-160-year-old vines with a dash of Viognier), and The Laird, a single vineyard Shiraz that is one of the most expensive wines made in Australia. Torbreck has a large portfolio, however, and makes around 15 wines in all – predominantly based around Rhône varieties including Grenache, Mourvedre, Viognier, Marsanne and Roussanne. The estate was founded by David Powell in 1994 with grapes initially obtained on a sharecropping basis. The name comes from a forest in Scotland where he once worked as a lumberjack, and many of the wines also have Scottish-themed names. Torbreck has since developed its own vineyard holdings but much of its fruit is still sourced from selected growers throughout the Barossa Valley. The second vintage (1996) of the Runrig Shiraz garnered strong reviews in the highly influential US wine publication The Wine Advocate, leading to intense international interest. Since then there have been consistent annual ratings of 95-99 points in The Wine Advocate and Torbreck has been named as one of the World's Top 100 Wine Estates by US wine critic and Wine Advocate founder Robert Parker. The Laird was first made in 2005 with the intense small-berry Shiraz grapes sourced from Malcolm Seppelt's prestigious five-hectare (12-acre) Gnadenfrei vineyard. The wine made is aged for three years in thick-staved French oak barrels. The inaugural vintage and the 2008 both received 100-point scores from Lisa Perotti-Brown in The Wine Advocate. The chief winemaker is Ian Hongell, one of the region's most respected figures. He previously held the equivalent position at Peter Lehmann Wines.
